you make me wanna... LaLa.com?

it's time for 3 music posts. first on the menu: muxtape meets iTunes for your online music needs. if you haven't already heard about this new it-toy, you should look into it. it hasn't converted me from iTunes yet, but it has me poking around and it's definitely worth the curiosity invested.

the short of it:
6 million tracks (+counting). you can listen to any song once for free; no "thirty second preview." currently there are no ads and no subscription fees. just sign up and listen. if you want to listen again, you pay based on what you're licensing for... web only is 10 cents, mp3 download is 79--cheaper than iTunes. if you already own a song, they 'move' it to your purchased tracks for free.

oh and yeah, there's that social aspect where you can add friends, and a last.fm style graphic aspect where i know what kind of style of music a person is into on a sliding scale. it also has this "CD trading" feature you can do, but i don't know what that is yet. and for what it's worth, so far they seem to have most of the stuff i've looked for, including my more esoteric choices. okay, they didn't have Emily's Sassy Lime, but at least they knew the band existed.

and so forth...
so this is being hailed as something of a breakthrough in music distribution. i mean, it's cheaper, and that's a plus, but since it's newer, it's not as integrated. i will need more time before i surrender the awesome that is iTunes. it does seem like a step forward from last.fm and muxtape, merging the social with the purchasing directly, as well as offering a space for all of it to be held purely online if one should so desire. this is a plus for organizational types and i'm sure a few other 'types' as well; the lack of a subscription fee with an iTunes-like purchase system is just an added bonus.