Saturday, April 04, 2009

Testing LALA's playlist embedding



Lala is a online music store, that also features an optional music trading feature for members. The trading is why I joined in the first place: I sent out CDs I no longer wanted (everything from MC Hammer, to an extra copy of OK Computer that I had for some reason), and got CDs in the mail from other members (a bunch of U2 and Bjork singles, other gaps in my collection like Sinatra, G'n'R, AC/DC, QOTSA... but also some new bands I discovered through lala like Material Issue)

...blah blah blah... point of story is: I'm testing their playlist embedding feature.

Update: it works ok. Lala makes uploading music faster by scanning your mp3s, and "automatically" adding songs that are in their database, and that you already own. There are three big flaws I've run into, so far: a) if your mp3s are not tagged the way lala has them tagged it won't recognize them (especially problematic for compilations), and b) if you listen to a lot of music that's not in their database, then you're also out of luck. (e.g. music that's not sung in English, British girl groups, European electronic music). Also, c) they automatically add clean versions of songs with bad language.

You can also *upload* songs but obviously that takes a long time.

This here playlist is just a bunch of random songs I uploaded and a couple I bought from lala. A few highlights: Sabali is an awesome French House song created by a blind Malian couple and the guy from Blur. I Know is some amazing Italo-Disco from Sweden. Baby Blue is the greatest song Dennis Wilson ever wrote.

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