Fix It Friday: Lala.com
Posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 6:00.
Why It’s Awesome
Lala.com is iTunes, only better. It allows you to take your entire music library anywhere you have an internet connection. It shows you everything your friends are listening to and allows you to selectively share songs on Facebook and Twitter. It lets you listen to any song in its entirety for free once, buy unlimited plays of any song for 10 cents, and gives you access to any songs you have already purchased elsewhere.
What Needs Fixing
1. Integrated Song Lyric Search
I often identify songs by searching for lyrics on Google. Song lyric sites are a mess with trashy ads, text selection blockers, and (ironically) inaccurate lyrics or song titles. Also, Google search results are not specialized. Google returns multiple lyric sites with the same song instead of multiple songs that might be matches. Having lyric search integrated into a music store would save me a step.
2. Improved Song Discoverability
Pandora and iTunes Genius Mixes are amazing for days when I just want a never ending playlist. Pandora introduces me to new songs and iTunes Genius Mixes remind me of great music I’d forgotten. A tangental recommendation from aggregated behavioral data is my generation’s DJ.
Add an audible notification when playing a song not in my playlist so that I know to buy it if I like it.
3. Omnipresence
My iPhone, PS3, and Squeezebox can’t connect to Lala. I know that Flash is the problem here, but I’m not always at my computer when I’m listening to music. More so, there’s a huge market opportunity to bring the power of Lala to devices that Apple won’t allow to sync with iTunes. There are millions of Palm Pre and Google Android phone owners who want iPod like functionality.
4. Playlist Power
I’m sure someone has created a playlist on Lala for jogging in the rain and missing Boston, but I’d never be able to find it without search capability. Playlist search by mix name and description are a must for a music sharing community. Bonus points for adding the ability to find playlists with a particular song in it.
