Geek News and Musings

First Look: Lala’s iPhone App Will Stream Your Music Library From The Cloud

Online music may be a treacherous space right now, but there are still a handful of music startups that may be coming close to getting it right. One of our favorites is Lala, a streaming music site that allows users to put their digital music library in the cloud, which can then be accessed from any computer. And soon, they’ll be able to access every song they own from their iPhones too, without having to worry about storage capacity or syncing.

Unlike music sites like http://music.myspace.com”>MySpace Music, which largely revolve around playlists and streaming individual albums, Lala is meant to serve as a web-based music library. The site has forged unique deals with every major record label (and many indies too) that allows users to populate their online library with the music they already have on their computer (legally acquired or otherwise). Users simply install the Lala Helper app, scan their computer for music files, and sign into Lala to find their entire music library in the cloud.

From there, users can browse through Lala recommendations and see what their friends are playing. The site has a unique buying model that allows users to purchase ‘web-only’ versions of songs for a mere 10 cents a pop - a price point that is very addictive, but also gives Lala a legitimate monetization scheme beyond advertising. Users can listen to these web-only songs as many times as they want, but only through the browser - if you want to load it on your iPod, you need to pay an extra 80 cents to download it. So while Lala has been fairly impressive until this point, it has still kept users chained to their desks.

That may change soon, when Lala releases its iPhone application that will allow users to stream any song from their music library, whenever they want (provided they have an internet connection).

While some of Apple’s traditional iPods have massive storage capacities, many people have abandoned them favor of iPhones, which offer more functionality but much less space for the money (most people have either 8GB or 16GB models). And given that these devices are also used to store applications and video files, many of us find us having to pick and choose which songs we want to carry around with us.

With Lala, you don’t have to worry about that. The app streams the songs from Lala’s servers, in much the same way Pandora does. But unlike Pandora and similar radio apps, you can chose any song from your music library whenever you want.

Unfortunately, it still may be a while before everyone can get their hands on the app. Lala says that there isn’t any concrete release date for the iPhone application, explaining that it still needs work on a number of fronts. For one, the app still has obvious bugs (some text fields don’t update correctly, and sometimes a button won’t work). But perhaps more important, it sounds like the company may still have some legal hurdles to wrangle, and it also needs to fine tune its monetization strategy. Hopefully it won’t be too long - this app would be a boon for users with large music libraries, and would also offer a huge boost to the Lala service as a whole.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Fake Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Have you ever been walking around a 99 Cents store and seen a bottle of cheap cologne with a sticker on the box that reads: “If you like “Calvin” you’ll love “Kevin!”? Apparently the same sort of thing applied to crooner/goofball double acts in the 1950s. Ladies and gentlemen, meet ersatz Martin and Lewis, Sammy Petrillo and ‘Duke’ Mitchell. There is not very much information about these guys online, but these four links, to the Wikipedia entries for Sammy Petrillo, Duke Mitchell, an interview with Sammy Petrillo, and an interview with “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla” director Herman Cohen are probably all you’ll need. Thanks Tara McGinley!

The Sorry State Of Music Startups

Online streaming music startups are in one very sorry place. On demand streaming rates range from .4 cents to 1 cent per stream - this is what the startups pay to the labels every time they play a song for a user. Add bandwidth and storage costs on top of that, which aren’t trivial for services that want to stream music quickly on demand. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from venture funds to startups to labels. Little of it makes its way to artists, and advertising revenues only cover a tiny portion of the fees.

The labels don’t care if the startups make money, lose money or go out of business. All they want is to make enough money to extend the ultimate surrender date as long as possible. That’s when we’ll finally see the economic reality dictated by the Internet impose itself irrevocably on the music industry. Unless draconian laws are created and enforced that put people in jail, or worse, for file sharing. And even that probably won’t work.

Anyway, these crazy economics are making the music startups skittish. MySpace Music, the biggest player in this space, may be spending $2 million or more per week to the music labels based on their own statistics that they’re streaming over a billion songs a week. Their streaming rate is likely to be the best in the industry, and it almost certainly isn’t lower than .4 cents per song. There is no way that they’re making that much in advertising revenue.

The hope is that downloads, ticket sales, merchandise and ring tones will make up the difference, but what we’re hearing is that very little incremental revenue is being made from these other revenue sources.

That means there’s no chance for these startups to work until the labels reduce, significantly, the streaming rates they’re charging. Or agree to radically different business models. There’s no sign that is happening any time soon.

These crazy economics are making startups do odd things. I emailed one startup recently to suggest a post here on TechCrunch noting that they seem to be doing well - recent setbacks with partners didn’t hurt traffic as much as it may have, and I wanted to note that. The startup flat out asked me not to post, because they didn’t want positive press to impact their negotiations with labels. They had to present as desperate a situation as possible.

Read that again: streaming music startups don’t want more people using their service, because they lose money from every one of them, and the perceived success from having more users makes it harder for them to plead with the labels to give them better deals.

Then there’s imeem. A few days ago I had multiple conversations with the startup around rumors that they owed significant amounts of money to the labels that they couldn’t pay, and that they had failed to raise money or sell themselves. Not much information was shared, other than to say that the rumored $30 million owed to labels was too high. Now they tell VentureBeat that the number is in the single digit millions.

Whatever the number - $30 million or $1 million - imeem can’t pay it. Their business model doesn’t work and it is going to continue to not work until the labels let it work. And they aren’t going to be doing that any time soon.

Big Music Doesn’t Like Streaming Music

The big music labels don’t like streaming music because it doesn’t help them offset declining CD sales, and the evidence now suggests that streaming doesn’t lead to music downloads. Everything we’re hearing says that the labels would like to see streaming music startups just go away for now so that they can focus on maximizing paid downloads and extend that ultimate surrender date.

So when you hear about labels renegotiating streaming deals to help out music startups, be skeptical. They’re likely lowering the rates from 1 cent down to something closer to .4 cents per stream. And all that means is that these startups will bleed a little slower. But they’re still going to go out of business, because the venture firms are done investing in them.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Do You Pay a Flat Monthly Cellphone Bill Pay-as-You-Go? [Ask The Readers]

Everybody knows monthly cellphone bills are a disaster, and according to the New York Times, you’d probably be saving money on a pay-as-you-go plan.

Photo by telethon.

A consumer group called the Utility Consumers’ Action Network wants you to know exactly what you’re paying per minute. Why should you care? Because where pay-as-you-go plans often cost as little as $0.05/minute, if you try to get the per-minute cost of your monthly plan, you may be paying five times as much. UCAN’s survey data suggests that:

Fifty-one percent of customers in the survey paid 25 cents a minute or less, and 49 percent paid 26 cents a minute or more.

The article isn't necessarily claiming that pay-as-you-go plans are always the best route, but depending on how you use your phone, pay-as-you-go could save many people serious cash—an appealing thought these days.

So we’re wondering: Are you on a monthly plan or a pay-as-you-go plan with your phone? If you do pay that monthly bill, do you have any idea what your per-minute cost is? (We can say that we have no idea, and that our bill has never done much to clarify.) Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.

Do You Pay a Flat Monthly Cellphone Bill Pay-as-You-Go? [Ask The Readers]

Everybody knows monthly cellphone bills are a disaster, and according to the New York Times, you’d probably be saving money on a pay-as-you-go plan.

Photo by telethon.

A consumer group called the Utility Consumers’ Action Network wants you to know exactly what you’re paying per minute. Why should you care? Because where pay-as-you-go plans often cost as little as $0.05/minute, if you try to get the per-minute cost of your monthly plan, you may be paying five times as much. UCAN’s survey data suggests that:

Fifty-one percent of customers in the survey paid 25 cents a minute or less, and 49 percent paid 26 cents a minute or more.

The article isn't necessarily claiming that pay-as-you-go plans are always the best route, but depending on how you use your phone, pay-as-you-go could save many people serious cash—an appealing thought these days.

So we’re wondering: Are you on a monthly plan or a pay-as-you-go plan with your phone? If you do pay that monthly bill, do you have any idea what your per-minute cost is? (We can say that we have no idea, and that our bill has never done much to clarify.) Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.