Lala Offers Two Ways to Buy Music October 27, 2008 — Downloads and streaming are nothing new. But lala.com offers both with an unusual angle on streaming. Instead of paying an all-you-can-eat subscription fee, you can pay 10 cents for the right to stream a song indefinitely. If that's not convenient, you can also pay to download it in the conventional way.

This is just the latest move by a company that got started by facilitating CD trading, moved on to internet radio, and is now dabbling in music sales. Originally Lala hoped to offer unlimited streaming with the intention of nudging users to buy tracks. That plan evolved to the current one, in which you can stream any song or album once for free, then pay 10 cents per track to maintain streaming rights, or 89 cents to download the track (MP3 256kbps VBR) and have your way with it whenever and however. The site's Music Mover will also examine the songs on your PC and add them to your online collection, so you can stream them without having to use that particular PC. Lala has obtained licenses with the record labels to do all this legally with more than six million songs.

See lala.com.