I read an article a while ago about LaLa and quickly became a member. At the time, you had to be invited in order to get a membership, but they let you put in your email address in hopes that they would invite you later. It took a few days for my invitation to come. Now they seem to have done away with the invitations entirely and you can simply sign up from the main page. Which is too bad, because i had earned about 50 invitations and wanted to give them out. When i only had five invitations, i spent a lot of time thinking about whom to send them to.
It's a fabulous system, doing for music something like what Netflix does for DVD movies. It's predicated on the fact that CDs, sent in simple clamshells, are very cheap to mail. Like Netflix, which wouldn't be cost-feasible for VHS tapes but works well for DVDs in paper sleeves, LaLa is relatively cheap (possibly the cheapest way to get new music). There's probably other factors, like the survivability of DVDs over audio tapes and being able to skip around on CDs.
But LaLa and Netflix are not the same business model. Where Netflix sends you their DVDs (i've received DVDs printed with the Netflix logo, indicating that they've gained some rights to reproduce the DVDs themselves) and you return them to Netflix when you're done, LaLa provides a coordination service between owners of music. I list the CDs i want and the CDs i have. LaLa matches my Have (Want) collection with everyone else's Want (Have) collection and tells me when a CD of mine is requested. When I choose to send it (i can choose to keep any CD on my have list), in clamshells and mailing envelopes LaLa provides, LaLa provides me the address of the member who has requested it. As i build a credit of sent CDs, the CDs on my Have list come to me from other members. The CDs never go to a LaLa facility, as with Netflix. And you own the CDs you receive through trade.
There's a lot of strategy to this trading. My collection of Hip Hop CDs moves pretty quickly, but some of the more obscure albums (Jimmy Cliff or An Anthology of Big Band Swing) have never been requested. The Music in Twelve Parts (on three CDs) of Philip Glass did go out. There's a fine balance: some CDs are too obscure to ever be requested, while others (Eminem's The Eminem Show) are so popular that they are sent by another member between the time I look to see what is requested and click to actually send it. This has happened on several occasions. It leads me to wonder whether I'll ever be able to move the very popular CDs (which I often don't want anymore) and whether I'm amassing an un-tradable collection by requesting only obscure CDs (Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos).
It's a very cool way to listen to a lot of new music. Anecdotally, the little thumbnails of album covers next to each item and the complete track list are very nice features. LaLa does charge for mailing, about $1.50 per trade which supposedly covers mailing cost and operating expenses. At first, I traded about ten CDs a month (both directions), as my have list was at about 50 and Want list about 30. Now it's slowed down because my Want list has shrunk. I'm holding out for several more obscure albums (live jazz recordings from the 60s and Gling-Glo). My Want list is current at 16, some of which have been there since I opened my account.
I recommend it to anyone with a lot of CDs that they aren't too attached to. Caveats are that you should have at least a few dozen CDs (which you're willing to trade) and they should be in good condition (no big visible scratches, no holes in the label through which light may shine). Without many CDs you won't get a lot of activity. With damaged CDs, the receiving member will mark it as received damaged and you'll lose the CD without getting trade credit for it.
Strategy which has occurred to me in writing this: BMG is the time-honored way to build a large CD collection. But BMG doesn't have most of what i want (Gling-Glo or Bob Willoughby). But i could order any number of popular CDs through BMG, with the intention of trading them through LaLa for CDs that i actually want....
I'm not going to touch the legality of CD trading. You can probably work it out yourself.
The success of Netflix and LaLa has impressed me. My plan is to start Bookflix (or Netbooks, or Netboox).
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