Scott Fillmer » lala http://www.scottfillmer.com Life in Faith & Photos Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:10:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Lala.com Now Shutdown and Discontinued http://www.scottfillmer.com/2010/06/02/apple-kills-music-service-lala-com-now-shutdown-and-discontinued/ http://www.scottfillmer.com/2010/06/02/apple-kills-music-service-lala-com-now-shutdown-and-discontinued/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:45:41 +0000 Scott Fillmer http://www.scottfillmer.com/?p=5575

I was sorry to see Lala.com get shut down by Apple on May 31st. I had been a Lala.com user, trader, listener, since it was back in Beta testing and it was only a few guys trading CD’s with no jewel cases or artwork, back when their logo was red, not blue. That [...]]]>

I was sorry to see Lala.com get shut down by Apple on May 31st. I had been a Lala.com user, trader, listener, since it was back in Beta testing and it was only a few guys trading CD’s with no jewel cases or artwork, back when their logo was red, not blue. That was back when LaLa was great. Bill Nguyen started LaLa.com with an invite beta phase on March 6, 2006, for the purpose of being able to trade physical CD’s.

It was great, I had stacks of CD’s I didn’t want or didn’t want to listen to any more, I just threw them up there and looked for CD’s I did want (the original Swaptree but only for CD’s).  All for $1 a trade.  I got to meet new people who were also interested in music, and added to my music collection quite a bit during that time.

That led into a new phase called LaLa 2.0, which totally killed the trading on the site. To me, this was the beginning of the end for LaLa because I was there for the trading. They moved everyone over to Swaptree but it just wasn’t the same at all. The site then moved into live streaming music and really became a totally different site at that point. After a while, I came back and really began to like the new format of streaming music and the ability to listen to virtually any album via stream, or any of my own music, synced to their servers. I could listen to an entire album before I went to purchase the album on iTunes or Amazon, and the format was totally different from Pandora or Last.fm (both of which I like for different reasons).

But then… Apple bought LaLa.com, and as much as I like Apple, LaLa’s day were numbered. It was very clear Apple was going to shut down the site. Many of us were just hoping for an Apple version of LaLa, but so far, that has not come to pass at all. Of course they could be just shutting down to reload at this point but who knows. See ::

… and so on… There are all kinds of speculation saying that Apple will now lead the way in music in the cloud (and Apple Sees New Money in Old Media from the WSJ). Those saying Apple will be…

rolling out a cloud-based version of iTunes that would allow users to upload their media collections to Apple’s servers and stream the content to their computers and portable devices, reducing local storage requirements and eliminating the need to specifically sync content between devices…

I know Apple is powerful and all, but the music industry has been trying, really hard, to kill itself for years, and Apple would have to completely rearrange their agreements with the music industry to make this cloud stream happen.  I guess Apple could be the one, they have to announce something at WWDC next week that hasn’t been blown by Gizmodo.  In the mean time, the consumer is the one who looses, along with the artists, and especially the Indie artists who can thrive in the world of online music streaming.

Now if we could only get Spotify to open up their service to those of us in the United States (without having to use a proxy server, bit torrent, tor, IP address changer, i.e., just open up your international servers) we could get back to the business of discovering new music, and listening to the artists, not the businesses fight back and forth for the almighty dollar.

Looking for an alternative to LaLa in the mean time? Try Pandora, Last.fm, or Spotify (if you can get on), all good sites, but just not the same as LaLa.com of old.

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]]> http://www.scottfillmer.com/2010/06/02/apple-kills-music-service-lala-com-now-shutdown-and-discontinued/feed/ 0 Work with Books Today and Some LaLa.com Music Trading http://www.scottfillmer.com/2008/04/28/back-to-work-with-a-little-lala/ http://www.scottfillmer.com/2008/04/28/back-to-work-with-a-little-lala/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:47:16 +0000 Scott Fillmer http://blog.scottfillmer.com/?p=129 Well, its Monday, so back to work we go. It was a series of moving boxes of books in and out and off to make all kinds of various stops in town. Had to get in a little guitar practice, Tuesday is my next lesson and I think I should know [...]]]> Monday, April 28, 2008

Well, its Monday, so back to work we go. It was a series of moving boxes of books in and out and off to make all kinds of various stops in town. Had to get in a little guitar practice, Tuesday is my next lesson and I think I should know some of what he was trying to teach me. I have done pretty good on the E Blues Scale this week.

New Music Arrivals from LaLa.com

I trade music CD’s with the people over at LaLa.com and today I received three CD’s to add to my collection.

  • The Unplugged Collection – Volume One
  • Roger Waters – Amused to Death
  • John Mayer – Room for Squares

This was my first album by John Mayer and this particular one was really good. I knew quite a few songs on the album already but I will probably get his other two. I also didn’t know he was a “local” to the south. I also found a new artist, Matthew Perryman Jones, that I will have to check out. His demos I heard on his website sound great. Deborah also received her set of CD’s for the upcoming 2008 National Polka Festival in Ennis Texas. We go to this festival each year and to get going, she received 7 different polka CD’s for her birthday.

Everything Else

Our 15 year old Bassett Hound, Blazer, now has to go on some kind of outrageously expensive arthritis medication (Previcox), which I was informed after the fact was going to be $11 A PILL. Great, just added a $300/month expense in a 5 minute visit.

Nature in View

Our two (what we call) Fox Squirrels came over to check out the pile of pecans I put out for them. Didn’t take long for them to devour most of what was a 5 pound bag of cracked pecans.

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