Oh, and it's legal.
The wild idea of the founder of the site is that if you listen to music and like it, you'll buy it rather than download it illegally.
I know...it's a foreign concept...a company that thinks it might promote music by letting people listen to it, rather than suing people who want to listen to music. Right now the selection is limited but the company is in talks with the major music labels. LaLa downloads also work with Ipods but you don't have to use ITunes...again, another weird idea that not restricting your potential audience might actually increase your audience.
I find the whole thing stunning.
What will the Internet think of next?
Apparently, and admittedly I'm still in the testing phase of this service, LaLa will also scan your computer to find out what music you already have and then you can listen to that music from any computer, anywhere....without paying for it again. How very odd...what are they thinking? It's like they want my business or something.
Speaking of wanting business. Did I mention Lulu.com?
I found it through Natalie d'Arbeloff when I wanted to buy (the downloaded version of - hey, I'm on a budget) her wonderful book "The God Interviews."
She published it through Lulu.com which lets anyone publish almost anything from CD's to books to well, whatever. You don't have to publish 500 copies, you don't have to even put up any money up front. Obviously Lulu is getting a nice chunk of the profits and the more heady and experienced writers out there might know of better self-publishing options, but I did a walk through to publish a book (okay, except I didn't write a book first) and it took me about 15 minutes.
It let me choose hardback, soft cover, spiral bound, and even the art work if I wanted. Plus, you can put your book up for download and let people read it on their computers, or print it out themselves. You set your price, Lulu then factors in costs and its cut, shipping costs, etc. It's up to you to promote your book or CD or whatever, but it's really so easy *I* could do it...if I actually wrote something of course.
Anyway, I thought both services were worth mentioning.
I still need to get around to actually writing a book, but I'm listening to that possible prospect in my mind...which, by the way, is also a free service.
Of course, it's only licensed for one user...at least I think so.
"There's no one else in here, right?"
