Rhapsody claims its catalogue includes 8 million tracks, but unfortunately they only stream at 64kbps quality. [Real Networks | iTunes]

Update: Rhapsody has been approved. More information.

The screenshot is courtesy of a Gdgt hands-on, which explains that "unlike Spotify's yet-to-be-released iPhone app, Rhapsody's app lacks offline capability." No local storage until version 2.0, apparently. Bummer.

Also worth noting: the free app won't support Rhapsody Unlimited subscribers ($12 a month).

Even if the app is approved (that is, Apple doesn't balk at competition to iTunes on its own device), you kinda get the feeling it'll be a tough sell beyond existing subscribers until they get the local storage sorted. In the meantime, the company plans a limited time free-trial, and an Android version. From its blog:

"We are working diligently on an Android app and once we're done there, we plan to turn our sights on more mobile platform and carrier app stores"

[Real Networks Blog and Gdgt]

The biggest new feature would have to be the addition of Blu-Ray support, supposedly to go along with the Blu-Ray integration in upcoming iMacs. We're decided skeptics on a Blu-Ray/Apple union, because it doesn't really make a lot of sense for Apple's business model. Apple's making boatloads of cash from digital media, and supporting a physical format that they don't make a penny from just doesn't feel like a smart move. Plus, we've been hearing this damn rumor for years.

More plausible is the ability to rearrange and move iPhone apps with iTunes 9, which is the kind of feature Apple should have had for years. Aside from that, there's some typical rumbling about the integration of Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm—we wouldn't rule them out, but we're also not particularly excited about it. How about a "Play Next" or on-the-go playlist feature, like WinAmp, Mediamonkey and others have had for years? iTunes 9 is expected to debut around September, with the intro of new iPods. [Boy Genius Report]

What's great about SweetFM is that you can control it with an Apple Remote or the Mac's media keys, it has unlimited song skipping, you can export tracks to iTunes playlists, see the next 4 tracks coming down the pipe and pull down album art from Amazon or Last.FM. It's actually something of an interesting argument for native apps over web apps, even for actual web services—I like its user interface way better than the running Last.FM in my browser, and I feel like I have way more power at my fingertips.

To the point about streaming vs. file sharing, services like Last.fm, Pandora and Slacker have gotten to the point that it's easier and faster to find new music using them than poring over torrent sites. Or something like that. SweetFM is slicker, anyway. Do you guys actually download less now? [Chocomoko via TUAW]

Silver members will get a 3-month, ad-supported trial. Gold members get full access to the service, but they'll also be stuck watching ads. To fully escape advertisements, you'll need to subscribe, which will also bring some extra features that have yet to be detailed. And there's no word on how much it'll cost, but seeing as a regular Last.fm membership is $3 a month, it probably won't be very much.

As to whether or not you'll be able to play Last.fm station streams in-game, well, they still haven't clarified that for whatever reason. Or when exactly this will all happen. Eventually, one's got to assume, they'll give us all of the details. [Kotaku via Joystiq]

[NOTE: The following reflects the plans for the U.S. market]

Spring

In June, during E3, Sony enabled the PSP Video Store, which allows direct downloading of video content to the Sony portable.

Summer

The Nintendo DSi is scheduled to gain the ability to upload pictures snapped by either of the DSi's cameras to Facebook. Nintendo slates this for summer. It will assumedly be made available via a download to the DSi.

In August, the Xbox 360's Netflix service, which is available to paying Xbox Live Gold users who also have a Netflix account, will be upgraded to allow users to add movies to their queue via the 360, rather than strictly through their PC.

Also in August, Microsoft will launch a Games on Demand service, which will allow consumers to download full-sized Xbox 360 games to their harddrive. Based on the games shown at E3 in a mock-up of the service, expect these to be older games, like Lego Batman, Oblivion and Mass Effect.

Fall

In the fall, Xbox 360s will gain the ability to be receive Facebook and Twitter updates on their 360. The integration won't send status updates at you while you're playing games, but it will let you check up on your friends and link their accounts to their Gamertags for better social networking without the need of a computer.

In the fall, the Xbox 360 will offer Last.FM integration to Xbox Live Gold members.

Also in the fall, the 360 will enable users to try Instant-Streaming in 1080p, an on-demand video service that will allow 1080- video to be streamed without caching, buffering or delay for users with an 8mbps Internet connection or better.

As of October 1, when the PSPgo launches, all PSP users can expect that major new games issued by Sony for PSPgo will also be downloadable for regular PSPs. Sony isn't committing to when this transition will kick in for all PSP first-party games or the extent to which it will also take place for third-party PSP games, but users can expect October 1 to be an important date to watch as this move occurs.

—

There may be other firmware or app-enabled changes to these systems as well as to the Wii and PS3 by the end of the year. These are the ones announced so far. And the game consoles keep on evolving...

[PIC]

If you're an Xbox Live Gold subscriber, you'll automatically have access to the service when it drops on the console later this year. It'll allow you to use the service much like you can online right now. This means you can listen to stations based on the sound of certain artists, compile custom playlists, and create a custom station based on music you like.

There's no word on when exactly this will arrive, nor is there word on whether or not you'll be able to listen to stations in-game, but these screenshots should keep you sated for a little while at least. [Kotaku]

Project Natal is a bar that sits above or below your TV, much like the Wii's sensor bar. But instead of sensing controllers, this thing has a camera, sensors and a microphone inside that lets it get an accurate sense of your space and you in it. This lets you control games just by moving around; kicking, jumping, whatever. But that's really just the start.

What makes this so damned cool is that it lets you do more than just play games with it. You can also move through menus by swiping your hands back and forth. The camera allows for fun features like facial and voice recognition. When you have it running, your Xbox will recognize your face and sign you in automatically.

You can start to imagine the possibilities already. Everything from Minority Report style menu control to Dance Dance Revolution games that require you to actually dance rather than just hit buttons to videoconferencing in your living room, the thing just feels like the future. And it already makes the Wii seem like a gimpy and outdated piece of tech. There's no way it can touch what this will do.

What makes this so exciting isn't what they showed off today, which seemed like glorified tech demos. No, what's amazing is to think about what creative developers will be able to do with the dev kits that just arrived on their doorsteps. This is a whole new way of controlling not only games but what's quickly becoming the media and communications hub of your living room. Get excited.

Update: Microsoft explains how it works:

Compatible with any Xbox 360 system, the "Project Natal" sensor is the world's first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. Unlike 2-D cameras and controllers, "Project Natal" tracks your full body movement in 3-D, while responding to commands, directions and even a shift of emotion in your voice.

In addition, unlike other devices, the "Project Natal" sensor is not light-dependent. It can recognize you just by looking at your face, and it doesn't just react to key words but understands what you're saying. Call a play in a football game, and players will actually respond.

Why they renamed the video store to the Zune store is anybody's guess, but the fact that it brings with it 1080p Instant On streaming is great. Now full-HD video will start playing immediately when you buy it/download it.

As for the Netflix news, this has been a long time coming. No longer will you have to go to your computer to pick the movies you want to watch. Now you'll finally be able to search through the entire catalog on the Xbox itself. Not too shabby!

I think anyone reading this understands that the internet is the new trading post for artists, listeners, critics and salesmen. It's impossible to avoid some of the marketing campaigns carried out on MySpace and YouTube, but mostly music's move to the internet gives listeners more power to develop their own tastes, for better or for worse. You can turn to MP3 stores, recommendation services, internet radio and podcasts, MySpace—and even personal music blogs and forums that'll help you "sample" pirated music. Here's my take on each method of discovery and the relevance it has to listeners:

Recommendation Services

The Pandoras, Rhapsodys and Last.fms of the world are nice, because they do most of the discovery work for you, without pushing some corporate agenda on you behind the scenes (...ahem...Clear Channel). Even better, these services cater their first song selections around your initially revealed tastes, and as you give the software feedback as to what you like and don't like, they continue to refine and improve their artist recommendations. Zune's Mixview also provides a similar service, visually recommending similar artists and songs to those already in your library.

But my problem with a service like this is that you don't necessarily get music that's really new or groundbreaking. Sure, it might be new or exciting to the casual music fan, or just someone who spends all their time listening to these services, but for the true junkie—okay, maybe "music snob"—it's hard to really be wowed by any of these services. We've seen and heard most of it before.

MP3 Stores

Sometimes looking for new music to actually buy is a great way to discover new stuff. Whenever I stop through the legendary Amoeba Records in SF to buy actual, real CDs and vinyl, half my stack is full of stuff I'm completely unfamiliar with. The same holds true with MP3 stores.

Whether it's the monoliths like the iTunes and Amazon mp3 stores, or smaller music peddlers like Boomkat, Bleep, Beatport or Juno, most these stores not only let you click through and listen to all the 30-clips you can handle, but they have tons of recommendations in the sidebars, allowing you to explore similar artists and sounds. The only problem with this? If you don't want to buy all these tracks, hunting them down again is a drag. And in the case of some of the more obscure stores, you might not find the songs anywhere else.

Internet Radio and Podcasts
The beautiful thing about radio in its prime was that, top hits and genres-aside, you never knew what you were going to hear at any specific moment. That unpredictability has an addictive quality to it, and internet radio preserves that spirit to a degree. Though not as popular in the era of the iPod, I still tune in to internet radio stations when I'm feeling bored with my music collection.

Two of my personal favorites are KCRW out of LA, which sticks to indie and the non-top-40 pop hits, and Rinse FM out of London, which has a current rotation of DJs spinning Grime, Dubstep, House and whatever other electronic genres are currently bubbling over there. My favorite thing about these two stations are that they put the content above all else—playing music they like, and not necessarily music that will sell. (On perhaps the complete other end of the music spectrum, Wilson recommends similarly free-minded stations WFUV in New York, and KEXP in Seattle.)

The risk you run in your path of discovery, however, is that if your ears are at the mercy of the DJ you're listening to on internet radio, and if you don't like their taste, hard luck.

MySpace and Twitter

This is what I sort of view as the great democratic project in music. The complaint while the internet was in its infancy was that big media and big corporations had too much influence over what music made it, and what didn't. Obviously that's all changed, in large part to MySpace.

As a social media service at large, MySpace is an eyesore and an abomination. But as a place to discover new music, believe it or not, it's an invaluable goldmine. Big artists, small artists, fat artists, skinny artists—hell, your mom—all have the same basic framework at their dispersal to reach the masses when they're using MySpace. Here you can find your favorite established artists sneaking new tracks up on their page, you can find work from newer artists who have no official releases out, or you can stumble upon that completely random, brilliant band of 17-year-olds from Pawnee, Oklahoma throwing out avant-garde acid pop.

But the best part, is that you can click around their grid of friends, who most of the time are other musicians, and you can get lost in musical worlds you didn't know existed. I spent eight hours doing this one night last winter, and found enough new artists and styles that kept me interested for the rest of the year.

On the Twitter side, it's mostly just good for gathering names and news, but the fact that more musicians, writers and other people of interest are using the service to jot down thoughts means you get to see what they're into at any given moment. People ranging from The Root's ?uestlove, to The New Yorker's music writer Sasha Frere-Jones, to Diplo all twitter frequently about the new music they're digging at the time.

The Online Music Media

The big music magazines, like Rolling Stone and The Source, went from influential and respected in their prime for their great taste and writing, to walking punchlines later on for their willingness to make a buck at the cost of content. What this did was open the door for music blogs to jump in and give readers a new place to figure out what's new and good in the world of tunes.

Most of the bigger/more general music blogs (Pitchfork, Stereogum, Gorilla vs Bear) will never be the first ones to break a new artist, but they will be quick to tell you when known artists have new works available or coming out soon. Smaller, niche blogs (The Fader, Xlr8r, Valerie), however, will cultivate their sites like boutiques of taste, and always look for what's next in music, as opposed to what's now.

Filtering through sites like this takes a decent amount of work, however, and is for the dedicated music fan. Lesser enthusiasts need not apply.

"Sampling"

The Somali method is for the most hardcore of the hardcore. People who don't want to wait for the media to tell them what's what, and would rather just "sample" it for themselves, hit the internet hard and heavy for albums that leak weeks, sometimes months, ahead of their release.

"Sampling" these albums is not for the faint of heart. It takes a general sense of music knowledge, music news, ability to follow the right websites and some technical know how. Bittorrent (and once upon a time, Oink...RIP) is a hotbed for many music leaks as they hit, but since it's tough to mask your IP address if you're not in a private community, it's easier to "sample" the same album using RapidShare, MegaUpload or Mediafire. (In case you're wondering, avoid RapidShare at all costs, use Mediafire whenever possible...you'll save like 5 years of your life).

Generally the best place to "sample" these links to new album leaks are in the threads music-related forums. This could be a forum for an artist, a record label, a genre, or just music in general, but people always start an upload thread full of links for you to troll.

There are also blogs and sites that keep track of the latest leaks. Bolachas Gratis is probably the most famous of the bunch, famously hopping from blog service to blog service, finding a new home to post links to albums for you to "sample." Nodata.tv aims to do something similar, while there's another site, Did It Leak, that just lists albums it's seen floating around the internet. They even have a Twitter feed.

These days, once you have an album title, its as simple as visiting Google Blog Search, MAYBE typing an album name in the search bar in quotes, and MAYBE adding a 2009 and "+rar" or "+zip" to the search string (NO IDEA what those mean!). Search around for a few bit blogs that may have a link, and bam—new music to "sample".

This is undoubtedly the best method for pure discovery, because it lets you chase down the latest and greatest in music without being tainted by anyone else's opinion or tastes. But it also requires an obsessive, nerdish approach to music fandom that may have ramifications on your social life. Not to mention a total disregard for the economics of the music business, and for the needs of artists to be remunerated for their work. So, you know, proceed with caution.

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

The change comes with a new developer API that will actually make things much easier for other developers, who've had to rely on a few undocumented calls up until now. Current licensing agreements with labels—who Last.fm is in no position to alienate—prohibit mobile streaming, though the company's official mobile radio apps—right now just on the iPhone and Android—will still work fine.

As you could imagine, this kind of blows for a lot of people. Windows Mobile users will no longer be able to use Pocket Scrobbler, Symbian folks will have their beautiful baby, Mobbler, ripped from their hands, and BlackBerry owners will soon find FlipSide, a pay app, rendered silent. And as much as I'd like to, I don't really believe that we'll see official clients for any of the platforms, at least not soon. [Last.fm—Thanks, Jealousy!]

The Last.fm functionality not only brings personalized radio stations to the audio system, but also allows for full scrobbling capability for any digital audio played through the Sonos. The new radio stations ups the ante from the previous offering of 5000, which should keep radio junkies satisfied for quite some time. In addition, Pandora has gone from a premium Sonos service to a free offering. This comes on the heels of Pandora's move to ad-supported model. Both the Sonos Controller for iPhone (downloadable here) and the 2.7 software update are available now as free updates. [Sonos]

SONOS INTRODUCES THE SONOS CONTROLLER FOR iPHONE

Free Application Lets Music Lovers Control Leading
Multi-Room Music System from Their iPhone
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – October 28, 2008 – Sonos®, Inc., the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today introduced the Sonos Controller for iPhone™ as a free download on the iPhone App Store. Music lovers with an iPhone 3G, iPhone or iPod® touch can now control the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System all from their favorite portable device. A video demonstration of the free Sonos Controller for iPhone is available at HYPERLINK "http://www.sonos.com/iphone" www.sonos.com/iphone.
Sonos wirelessly plays all the music you want, all over your house, providing an unparalleled multi-room music experience. With Sonos ZonePlayers™ connected wirelessly in the rooms of your choice and a Sonos Controller for iPhone in hand, you can find and play the music you want with ease. Simply pick a room, pick a song and hit play. Play the same song in every room in perfect synchronization, or play different songs in every room.
By combining Sonos’ industry-leading multi-room control user interface with the iPhone’s large display and touch-screen technology, the Sonos Controller for iPhone lets you control the entire Sonos system and a world of music at the touch of a finger. The Sonos user experience allows you to quickly link and unlink rooms, without interrupting music playback. Select, Play, Pause, and Skip music in any room. Search for your favorite artists and songs by typing on the touch screen. Browse your collection by pointing and flicking. Change the volume in a single room, or in all your rooms at once, all from the Sonos Controller for iPhone.
The Sonos Controller for iPhone is the only iPhone Controller app that provides multi-room music control for the entire house and direct access to an infinite world of music including Last.fm, Napster®, Pandora®, Rhapsody®, SIRIUS® Internet Radio, 15,000 plus radio stations, shows and more. Plus, the Sonos Controller for iPhone gives music lovers control over their entire music collection* located on any computer on their home network, a Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive and even an Apple® Time Capsule. And, Sonos is the only multi-room music system that doesn’t require you to have your computer on or a piece of server software on the network to play music all over the home – just walk into your house, reach into your pocket, grab your iPhone, and turn on the music.
“The Sonos Controller for iPhone is another example of Sonos offering features and applications that make the system better, at no cost to our current or future customers,” said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. “Today’s announcement enables all of our customers to use a great personal product from Apple to control the world’s best multi-room music system.”
Sonos was the first multi-room music system to deliver wireless handheld control and today offers more ways to control music throughout the home than any other multi-room product on the market—the handheld Sonos Controller CR100, Sonos Desktop Controller for PC and Mac and now the Sonos Controller for iPhone. You can mix and match Controllers for the ultimate in convenience and control.
The Sonos Controller for iPhone requires an iPhone or iPod touch and at least one Sonos ZonePlayer to operate. The Sonos Controller for iPhone utilizes your existing home WiFi network to communicate to the Sonos Multi-Room Music System. iPhone, iPod touch, and Sonos ZonePlayers are sold separately. The Sonos Controller for iPhone is currently available in English only. Additional requirements include Sonos 2.7 System Software and iPhone 2.0 Software. The Sonos Controller for iPhone is compatible with all generations of Sonos hardware.
In conjunction with the new Sonos Controller for iPhone, today Sonos introduced Sonos Software 2.7. The new feature update, which is free to all Sonos customers, includes brand new support for a suite of music content including free access to more than 15,000 radio stations and podcasts from around the world, Last.fm and Pandora. (Media alert: See accompanying press release.)
Sonos is the first wireless, multi-room music system that lets you play all the music you want, all over your house — and control it all from the palm of your hand. To learn more about Sonos, to place an order or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer, please visit HYPERLINK "http://www.sonos.com" www.sonos.com or call 877.80.SONOS. For Sonos press kit information, please visit HYPERLINK "http://pr.sonos.com" http://pr.sonos.com.

SONOS INTRODUCES MULTI-ROOM ACCESS TO LAST.FM, PANDORA AND MORE THAN 15,000 RADIO STATIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD…FOR FREE

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – October 28, 2008 – Sonos®, Inc., the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today released Sonos System Software 2.7. Sonos 2.7 delivers a world of music to every room of the house—free of charge—by providing instant, computer-free access to Last.fm and Pandora® personalized radio services, plus more than 15,000 radio stations and shows via Sonos Radio. The free one-button software update is available to all Sonos customers and is available now for download.
The Sonos Multi-Room Music System is a unique multi-room music experience that keeps getting better over time with free software updates that connect music lovers to new content, features and more. Sonos now offers an unmatched suite of both subscription-based services (Napster®, Rhapsody® and SIRIUS®) and free music services (Last.fm, Pandora and Sonos Radio) right out of the box. All of these services stream music directly from the Internet to the house so they work even when the computer is turned off – no need to download songs or have a server running.
“Sonos now brings music from every corner of the world to every corner of the house with control from the palm of the hand," said Phil Abram, President & COO, Sonos, Inc. “By offering our customers a suite of free content with this update, we continue to provide even more ways to listen to the music they love, all over their home."
Sonos’ new Radio guide, powered by RadioTime, lets you tune in to more than 15,000 free Internet radio stations, radio shows and more. You can browse easily for both local and international stations or use Search to find a specific station, show or host. When you find what you want, simply add it to Favorites for your future listening.
Last.fm on Sonos is a free global music service that lets you discover, play and share new songs and artists based on your unique musical tastes — right from any Sonos Controller.  After an account is created on Last.fm, Sonos customers can enjoy continuous music streaming all over the house. Simply enter the name of a favorite artist or tag keywords and Last.fm’s unique recommendation system instantly creates a personalized radio station featuring music you’re sure to love. Last.fm on Sonos also features the capability to scrobble all of the music you play on your Sonos Multi-Room Music System.  Every song you listen to on Sonos — whether it’s from your personal music library or a music service like Napster®, Rhapsody®, Pandora®, and of course, Last.fm — is automatically added to your personal music profile. This allows Last.fm to customize your music recommendations and open the doors to even more music discovery, in more rooms of the house.
Pandora, the popular personal radio service is now available for free on Sonos. After creating a free account on Pandora.com, Pandora lets you create and play up to 100 radio stations based on your favorite songs or artists. Using Pandora’s Music Genome Project®, Pandora’s highly-trained musicians analyze songs, one at a time, using close to 400 musical traits including melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics, and more to automatically build a station with songs that share interesting musical similarities. With a Sonos Controller in hand, you can rate the music you hear to further refine the station’s playlist on the fly. Play the same Pandora radio station in each room, perfectly synchronized; or, play different stations in different rooms to fit the mood.
Other new features of Sonos System Software 2.7 include:
Updated Rhapsody support with improved sound quality. Rhapsody now streams at 192 MP3 (versus 128 kbps WMA previously).
Support for RTSP streaming protocol which allows for expanded Internet Radio coverage.
Dutch and Swedish languages are now supported in the Sonos system software. Sonos already supports English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
For more information about the features of Sonos Software 2.7, please visit: HYPERLINK "http://www.sonos.com/support/software_update.aspx" http://www.sonos.com/support/software_update.aspx.
In conjunction with today’s software update, Sonos also introduced the brand new Sonos Controller for iPhone™ which is a free download on the iPhone App Store. Now, you can use your iPhone, iPhone 3G or iPod® touch to control the best multi-room music system in the world. The Sonos Controller for iPhone is the only iPhone Controller app that provides multi-room music control and direct access to a world of music including Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody, SIRIUS® Internet Radio, 15,000 radio stations, shows and more. Plus, the Sonos Controller for iPhone gives music lovers control over their entire music collection* located on any computer on their home network, a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and even an Apple® Time Capsule. (Media Note: See accompanying release.)

So how do they get away with it? Well, Lala assumes that you're doing most of your listening over the web—as a result, the songs that cost a dime are only playable through a browser, like Rhapsody in the olden days. If you want the DRM-free MP3 for your portable player (or whatever), you're looking at a more typical 89 to 99-cent sticker price. All songs in the 6 million+ track catalog can be sampled once for free before you commit to purchasing them, and the 10 cents for a web purchase can be credited toward your MP3 purchase, so it's not money lost.

If you listen to most of your music sitting at the computer, and have qualms about stealing it, Lala may very well be a good way to go. It's like a soup made up of the best components of other online music services such as iTunes, Rhapsody, Pandora, and Last.fm. The site is appealing, the music recommendation engine is good, and there's some value in there. If you're the type of person who would add just one or two new songs per day to your personal playlist, this kind of a la carte pay system is a lot cheaper and more practical than Rhapsody. You can build up a nice collection for a few dollars a month, and you don't keep paying after you've amassed all the music you need.

Finally, web browsers and internet connectivity is becoming, if not already, the norm in smartphones, I mean "coms", and Lala plans to expand to meet this market. They already have an iPhone app in the approval process, which will play recommended songs and hopefully soon, your web library too. An app that acts like Simplify and Pandora together? It could be a real winner, but we'll reserve judgment till we see it in action. [Lala]

PALO ALTO, Calif., October 21, 2008 – Lala is unveiling the first and only free service to instantly provide anywhere Web access to an existing MP3 music library such as iTunes. Replacing the outdated approach of uploading MP3 files from a PC, Lala introduces a licensed technology to instantly match songs from consumers’ personal music library with the Web-based catalog on lala.com.

Adding new music to a collection is easier and less expensive than ever. Sample any full song or complete album for free. Add songs to a Web collection for only 10 cents, and buy DRM-free MP3 downloads for as low as an additional 79 cents.

“We live our lives in a browser, whether it’s emailing, watching television shows or using Facebook” said Geoff Ralston, CEO of Lala. “When I launched Yahoo! Mail few thought hundreds of millions would depend on Web email. My music belongs online in the same way. Will there be anything without a browser in 5 years?”

Microsoft Explorer, FireFox, and Safari browsers on both Windows and Mac OS are supported.

Major and Independent Labels Support
All four major labels including EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and publishers have licensed Lala with partnership agreements to stream and sell music online.

And unlike ad-supported music sites, Lala has garnered support from over 170,000 independent labels and distributors.

"We thank Lala for their support of A2IM and the independent music community and congratulate them on the launch of their new service which includes tens of thousands of independent artists, labels, aggregators and distributors," said Rich Bengloff, President of The American Association For Independent Music (A2IM). "As the primary advocacy group for the independent music community, we also applaud Lala for recognizing the value of independent labels and artists to their business and providing inclusion to the independent community in their launch."

The Most Affordable Music on the Web
Lala offers consumers the easiest, most affordable way to buy music on the Web. Lala’s catalog includes over 6 million songs which users can play once for free before buying. For as little as 10 cents, users can buy a Websong, a new product that gives users the ability to play as often as they choose from their web collection. The Websong fee can be applied towards the purchase of the DRM-free MP3 version of the same track. MP3s are priced from 89 cents or 79 cents with a prior web song purchase.

Unique Features of lala.com
· Completely advertising free service
· First and only fully licensed service for free Web hosting of a personal music library
· Instant matching of MP3s and iTunes Fairplay songs to the Web without uploading
· Fully featured web-application in a browser with speedy look-ahead search, drag and drop playlist creation, and instant, continuous music streaming
· 6 million and growing song catalog
· Free sampling of the entire catalog as songs or albums
· Websongs available for purchase at 10 cents or less
· DRM-free MP3s for additional price of 79 cents
· Support of popular Web browsers including Windows Explorer, Firefox, and Safari
· Support for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS
· Catalog of all four major labels and publishers
· Catalog of 170,000 independent labels

What's sort of shady is that they wouldn't discuss how they track how many times you've listened to a track, since you don't have to log in or register—probably based on your IP address, though. Of course, this intersects with advertiser interests, since they can better target ads based on your track history.

Another neat aspect of the re-launch is their artist royalty program, where unsigned artists can directly upload their music to Last.fm, and they'll get paid every time their track is played—basically pulling in the ad revenue that would've gone to a label, if they were on one.

And they're definitely not stopping with music. Asked about a "Last.tv" being in the works, Last.fm co-founder said that "music videos are the bridge into visual content."