creative deconstruction

What Lala Did Right – And What Apple Should Learn from It

Posted on 04. May, 2010 by refe in TECHNOLOGY

Lala - where music no longer plays...

I discovered Lala only a couple of months ago, and despite it’s flaws it quickly became my go-to service for discovering and sharing music. I was excited to hear that Apple had acquired Lala because I figured that with Apple behind the scenes the music I had purchased in the cloud would be more secure.

Late last week an email arrived in my inbox informing me that my favorite music service was shutting down. So much for security.

Of course, this didn’t come as a huge surprise – I don’t think anyone expected Lala to simply continue on forever as it had before the Apple acquisition. Still, I admit that I did expect a more graceful transition as Apple (presumably) integrates Lala with iTunes.

In light of this, I figured I would jot down a couple of quick reminders to Apple of exactly what was so great about Lala. Because Apple really needs Creative Deconstruction to tell them how to build successful products. These are the features that have caused me to have such a good time with the service, and which allowed it to become such a vibrant community.

Full streaming try-before-you-buy

One of my biggest complaints against iTunes has always been the 30 second preview. 30 seconds is no where near enough time to decide whether or not a song is worth purchasing. This limitation has almost single-handedly prevented iTunes from become a legitimate music-discovery platform. You can purchase your music there, but you usually have to hear it somewhere else first.

This is a big missed opportunity. With the last couple of iTunes updates Apple introduced the ‘Genius’ recommendation feature, which seeks to solve this problem. But it only goes halfway. Most people don’t want to drop their cash solely on the recommendation of a piece of software without hearing the track first.

Lala got this right. If users wanted to check out a track that Lala or another user recommended to them they could stream the full track once. After that they still had access to a 30 second sample.

10 cent cloud-based tracks

Once not enough? That was ok because Lala gave users the option of purchasing a web- based copy of any track or album that was kept online. These cloud-based tracks only set a user back 10 cents, so if you thought you’d end up liking something but still weren’t sure there wasn’t a ton of commitment.

Most believe that the whole point of purchasing Lala was so that Apple could launch ‘iTunes.com’ or a version of iTunes in the cloud, so there is very little chance that this feature won’t survive the transition. However, I hope that Apple maintains the 10 cent price-point. Any higher than 10 cents and the value of a cloud-based music collection is severely reduced. Unfortunately, while Lala may have been able to fly under the recording industry’s radar, Apple will likely face much more scrutiny over the low price on these cloud-based tracks.

Social sharing and points that don’t mean anything

All of the above is great, but by far Lala’s most addicting feature was social sharing.

Towards the end, Lala’s user community had become very active. Members could follow one another, Twitter-style, and share playlists and recommendations with their connections. To incentivize this activity, points - called ‘influence’ - were distributed to users who’s recommendations resulted in other users listening to or purchasing those tracks.

These points weren’t actually worth anything beyond bragging rights, but a few users rose to the top over time and began to actually carry some real influence within the community. When they recommended something people listened to it.

If Apple introduces this feature to the much, much wider user base of iTunes, we may actually see real tastemakers begin to emerge.

Conclusion

My advice to Steve Jobs? Maintain or improve these features when you launch your anticipated iTunes in the Cloud. Thankfully, Apple has a history of doing things right. And of course, if all else fails, perhaps another service will spring forth to take up where Lala left off. If Apple doesn’t get it right, maybe I’ll do it myself. That’s the great thing about the internet, isn’t it?

UPDATE: It seems my fears of scrutiny over the low cost of cloud-based tracks on an Apple service may not be unfounded. Read this article for more information.

Tags: Apple, cloud computing, iTunes, Lala, music discovery, Steve Jobs, streaming