That is an interesting question, gillians. It appears - from a 2-yr old article in the Wall Street Journal - that it reached an agreement with Warner Music to allow them to stream (and thus, to hopefully sell) songs. By extension, I suspect that the unsourced comment on Wikipedia that they have agreements with 4 major labels is correct.

That WSJ article is a very interesting (if not dated) insight into their business plan - and thus, by extension, some of its competitors. They apparently have similar rights to stream as subscription services - like Rhapsody, which I've been using for years - but they have taken the chance of giving the subscriptions away. Thus, per the article, they are losing $6-8/user/month. The owner estimated that they would spend $40million in the first couple of years. (It has been just over two years since that article, so it would be interesting to see how they're doing.)

I remember when lala was first launching as a kind of combo NetFlix/Napster - promoting music-sharing by users mailing each other CD's. I guess that didn't cut it alone, and they added this newer method.

I'll stick with Rhapsody - I've been very happy with them for years and I have no worries about their system. But, lala does seem to be legal - even though I wonder if they'll be around in the long-term.
Source(s):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118100454736824471.html


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