Free Music at Lala.com

Taking a cue from Napster, and the transformation of the music industry that it facilitated, Lala.com is featuring free music. This website launched last year and allowed people to swap their CDs for $1. Today they entered a new facet of the music industry, selling music directly. They allow customers to listen to full songs and CDs for free on their site. This site is easy to use and clear, nothing to sign up for, no gimmicks, just type in music and click play. This feature, however, is far from free for them. They have to pay one cent in royalties for every song played on their site. How does a business like this expect to make money? They hope that by allowing songs to be played for free, they will eventually sell more CDs and digital downloads. This site will sell downloads only available to put on an Ipod, in order to prevent piracy. Customers can also access their iTunes library or their friends' libraries from any computer and be able to listen to whole CDs for free. "We believe over the next two years we might lose $40 million," founder Bill Nguyen said. They are banking on the model that the more people listen online, the more they will buy. As of right now, only select music is available, but Lala is looking to expand their collection in the near future.