Give the Gift of Music With Lala

Digital music has come a long way since its tangible beginnings as compact disc (remember those?), as has the phenomenon of social networking. So it comes as no surprise that music fans increasingly get recommendations for new tunes through Facebook, Twitter and their ilk. It's the online equivalent of the college dorm or teenage hangout.

Enter Lala.com. The relatively new online music service has been offering streaming music subscriptions for a little while, but has just tapped into the potentially lucrative world of social networking by offering music on Facebook's virtual goods store, according to a post on GigaOm.

Much like the virtual goods given and posted to friends' Facebook profiles (I have a "kiss" from my wife, for example), Lala is offering music, either as 10-cent streams or downloadable MP3 files "at various price points." So while it may offer the same music at roughly the same prices as the other players, it will better enable the kind of impulse buying that goes hand-in-hand with Facebook culture.

Lala's Facebook service has not yet been launched and details are limited as of this writing, according to GigaOm:

"The virtual gifts can apparently be Web songs that will cost one Facebook credit, an equivalent of 10 cents, or full-song downloads that cost about 10 credits. Neither Lala nor Facebook is providing details on how their model will work yet, including whether the recipient's friends get to stream the song as well."

I'm definitely intrigued. And the next time you consider sending me a "virtual gift," if you're my FB friend of course, please spare me the pint of beer I can't actually drink and send me some music instead.

Photo courtesy of Joe Mable, via Wikimedia Commons