Is Lala.com a label slave?

Is Lala.com just blahblah?Sometimes Techcrunch is too easy to impress. I think Inquisitr’s review is closer to the truth: Lala is trying to get people to pay to listen to streamed music on their desktop when they can already listen to streamed music for free from any number of providers - last.fm, grooveshark, even major portals like Yahoo! do better.

Lala’s CEO is Geoff Ralston, who used to head Yahoo!’s communications business. This being Lala’s third reincarnation, I wonder if the backers have just told Ralston to do what ever the majors want in order to licence a decent catalogue? Because this iteration feels like something major labels want more than something consumers want. Hence the geographical limit preventing users outside the US from using Lala. Not even Yahoo! Music has geographical restrictions on its streamed music.

Yes, there’s a difference in consumer benefit between per-track on demand similar music on demand, but not $0.10’s worth. We have to expect that a wide variety of music licensing models will be tested in this brave new world and only a fraction of them will make it. I’m betting this one won’t.

Loving The Feeling of this ringtone

I’m loving The Feeling’s music at the moment, particularly the 2006 song ‘I Love It When You Call.’

Then it struck me how good it would sound as a ringtone on my iPhone.

Just in case you think it would sound great on your iPhone too, here’s the ringtone I made.

(Just drag it onto iTunes and it should appear in your list of ringtones.)

Don’t thank me, just buy the album, it’s great!

• Twelve Stops and Home on iTunes Store US
• Twelve Stops and Home on iTunes Store Australia