In Praise of lala

If you haven't noticed in my music posts, I usually have an embedded player from lala.com so you can enjoy entire tracks.  I actually discovered lala a few years ago.  Their owner was the sole force behind woxy.com staying on-air.  (WOXY started as an modern rock terrestrial radio station in Oxford, OH.  I worked there for a year in college where I solidified my love for music, and my knowledge I could never survive doing the type of radio I love.  But that is a story for another day).  He swooped in and gave them access to the technology and funding to keep their fantastic feed streaming over the net.  I highly recommend it.

Back to lala, at my point of introduction, they were doing this weird CD swapping service through the US Postal Service.  Think Netflix envelopes that you put a CD you own into, and it get routed to a person requesting it.  If you trade something, than you can request something.  Once a trade happens, it is the receiver's CD to own.  Sound complex?  It was.

But now, they have leapfrogged any iTunes-style service out there.  First, you can listen to an entire song one time.  No pathetic 30 second sound bite.  Secondly, they make it easy to share new tunes.  Finally, they have a program that uploads all the music you have in iTunes into the 'cloud'.  After the upload, you can listen to your collection (even playlists) any where there is wireless.  Amazing.  

Who knows how long they will last.  But for now, I'll support them by buying all my online music I can from them.  They deserve the patronage of all music lovers.