LaLa.com stalls its free music offering

July 10, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments |

Lala.com, the quirky Palo Alto, Calif. company which launched an ambitious free music service last month with great fanfare, has stalled on delivering the program.

The offer had always seemed too good to be true: Lala said it would stream all sorts of music to users for free (see our coverage here; scroll down), and that it would spend a whopping $140 million to afford it. The idea was that users would enjoy music enough to want to buy it.

Lala says it still plans to offer the service, but says a decision to delay was made because of heavy demand on its servers and a music catalog that isn’t impressive enough yet to meet users’ expectations.

Lala has raised $14 million in two round of funding. The company has swung wildly from business model to business model, so this latest episode isn’t surprising.

We contacted the company last week, when reports of the delay emerged, but it failed to respond. The WSJ (subscription required) has since confirmed the delay.

Next Story: FCC to open wireless spectrum — will Google strike?
Previous Story: Stickam’s ties to porn