Revamped lala.com offers free streaming of music tracks

LOS ANGELES -- First a CD-trading site, then a free Web-based music browser, lala.com is being born again.

The site is relaunching today as a hybrid, offering the digital download functionality of iTunes and the free music streaming of MySpace Music without the ads.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based private company is backed by $35 million in venture capital from Bain Capital LLC, Ignition Partners and Warner Music Group Corp. It first launched in July 2006.

That first version lacked scale. The second version was met by numerous me-too players from MySpace and iMeem to Last.FM, said co-founder Bill Nguyen.

This time around, listening to any of the 6 million tracks at lala.com will be free.

But there are other costs associated with the site.

For instance, it will cost 10 cents to put a song in a Web locker for unending access on any computer where the user logs in.

Another 79 or 89 cents allows the user to download an MP3 track, with no digital rights management coding.

Because the site has no advertising, the business will have to rely on selling Web tracks and MP3s.

"Where we get into trouble is if we do a lot of streaming and we don't sell music," Nguyen said.

Users of lala.com's test site -- who number nearly 300,000 -- are already buying enough music to put the site on the path to profitability.

In the testing period, for every 1,000 free streams, the site sold about 60 Web songs and 60 MP3s. It needs to sell 15 to 20 of each per thousand free streams to be profitable, said spokesman John Kuch.

Users can upload their own music from CDs and iTunes into their digital locker for free. This gives lala.com enough knowledge of an individual's tastes to be able to market similar songs to him or her, a technique that boosts the sell-through rate about fivefold, Nguyen said.

The site has the participation of all four major record labels -- Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI -- and 170,000 independents.

Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony Music Entertainment Inc., said a key reason for licensing music to lala.com and other sites like it was the ability to sell music downloads.

"We do streaming deals that also have an upsell opportunity," Hesse said. "To us, that is an important side-by-side concept."

Sony's digital music sales represent more than a third of its revenue in the United States and it is on pace to exceed revenue from physical CDs "fairly soon," Hesse said.