I just noticed Metropolis Records removed all their stuff from the site.
What’s up with that?
I don’t know what you’re talking about, but, being a member since it started, I will try to fill you in.
It was a CD-trading service around 2005-2006 that basically let you give up a CD for a CD of your choosing depending on who wanted it. You were charged shipping, and that was it. It was basically Netflix, but for music.
Sometime around 2007-2008, the focus on streaming music for cheap (or free) became a major focus, way more than the idea itself beyond trading albums in physical format. You could basically buy ‘credits’ (aka songs) for almost 30 cents less than Amazon and iTunes were selling them at. It was cool, but the bummer was that you could only play them through lala.com
Late last year, they were bought out by Apple. I suspect it has something to do with competition, and maybe even possibly just to eliminate the confusion between Last.fm and Pandora (which I see little difference in).
So, basically, lala.com is dead (to me and others) and is just a placeholder in streaming music. Metropolis probably doesn’t dig that, so they pulled their music on there.
Also, I just realized that you probably know the background on this, as your question is more of a “wtf” reply instead of is “what is lala” topic. So, sorry. I don’t know why. Who knows.
All I know is I bought something like 75 albums on there for like less than 100 bucks. Thank you lala.
Yeah, it was a “wtf”, not a “what is lala,” but thanks for taking the time!
It’s still my second choice for online music purchasing, and the fact that you can listen to entire songs for free is a big bonus. Amiestreet is first, but they have a fairly limited selection. I used to love eMusic, but they had to go and fuck it all up.
And eMusic was a great site before iTunes and Amazon decided to make their MP3’s DRM-free, eMusic were one of the first to carry “weird” music…
I take it you’re not on Swaptree? I gotta admit, it’s better than Lala but the layout is still nuts…
Looks like Metropolis is back, but some stuff is missing maybe. Weird.