{"id":1053,"date":"2009-12-05T17:09:32","date_gmt":"2009-12-05T21:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2009-12-06T20:48:22","modified_gmt":"2009-12-07T00:48:22","slug":"bodybye-lala-hopefully-we-will-meet-again-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=1053","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Lala. Hopefully we will meet again soon."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"full_LALAlogo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Back to the whole music\/social networking thing.\u00a0 Before the current incarnation of iTunes was released (that would be version 9), there were rumors that part of the update would include a social networking element<\/a> that would allow iTunes users to post music to FaceBook, Twitter, etc.\u00a0 Well, that never happened, and the current version of iTunes is pretty similar to the previous version.<\/p>\n

But social networking and music is still a fertile area for development.\u00a0 Last.fm<\/a> has been around for a while and features a clunky, Facebook style interface.\u00a0 The best part of Last.fm is that it can, if you wish, track everything you listen to on your computer by means of proprietary technology called Scrobbling.\u00a0 That’s great fun for seeing what tunes you and all your friends are listening to.\u00a0 There are also discussion forums and lots of news and gadgets to keep you interested.\u00a0 The one thing that’s really missing from Last.fm is music.\u00a0 The social part is there, but the users have to supply their own tunes.<\/p>\n

Blip.fm<\/a> does it best, as far as the social aspect is concerned.\u00a0 Users select music from the Blip database (which is really just a feed into Youtube and Imeem.\u00a0 But for each selection, other users with similar tastes are suggested.\u00a0 The genius is with Blip’s ‘props’ system.\u00a0 You give props to other users\/DJs and get props back.\u00a0 This means there is a currency that you exchange with other users in order to tell them that you like what they play.\u00a0 You try to accumulate more props and also ‘listeners’ (friends) as you go forward on your musical exploration.\u00a0 It is a great way to get connected with people who like similar music.<\/p>\n

The other thing that Blip does extremely well is interface with existing social networks.\u00a0 The actual Blip interface itself looks just like Twitter and even uses “@” and “#” in similar ways.\u00a0 Also, you can tell Blip to broadcast your selections to your Twitter feed or Facebook page, thus allowing you to share music with other, even if they are not in your Blip social network.<\/p>\n

The only problem with Blip is that there is not very much music, and a good portion of it is amateur video from Youtube.\u00a0 Songs are incomplete, of inferior quality or different versions.\u00a0 And it’s basically impossible to know which version is going to start playing when you blip it.<\/p>\n

Along comes Lala.com<\/a>.\u00a0 This is the most extensive collection of music I have seen on the internet and it’s delivered to you in a cloud-based interface that is identical to what you are used to looking at with iTunes.\u00a0 Lala succeeded in a lot of ways.\u00a0 Firstly, if you could be bothered to take the time, you could upload your whole music collection and listen to it anywhere you could get online with a computer.\u00a0 You could broadcast your selections easily to Twitter or Facebook.\u00a0 And there was even a social networking aspect that allowed you to “influence” other users and share selections.\u00a0 While the architecture of this social networking fature seems pretty slick, users just didn’t seem that interested, which I though was a shame.\u00a0 The culture at Blip was that you would almost always ‘follow-back’.\u00a0 At Lala, it seems like no one cares.<\/p>\n

Another nice aspect to Lala was that it offered something to sell, thus negating the need to have tons of ads, like we see at Blip.\u00a0 At Lala, you could pay ten cents for a ‘web’ song meaning that you could listen to it online as many times as you wanted.\u00a0 Or you could buy a song for $.79 ($7.99 for most albums) and have the mp3 DRM- free to do whatever you want.<\/p>\n

So now, Apple has purchased Lala<\/a>, at a discount rate, and no one seems to know what will happen next.\u00a0 Of all the music\/social\/media\/networking applications in the cloud, this was the one I liked the best, so I am hopeful that Apple doesn’t just stick it in the trash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back to the whole music\/social networking thing.\u00a0 Before the current incarnation of iTunes was released (that would be version 9), there were rumors that part of the update would include a social networking element that would allow iTunes users to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,526],"tags":[714,860,931,26,861],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1060,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}