Rocks Off is no longer a grieving widower, bemoaning the loss of his faithful Lala.com with the shades drawn and a glass of wine, constantly clicking a dead link while listening to Leonard Cohen on CD like a caveman.
A few days after Lala died, we got a message from a friend that he had the inside track on a new website called Rdio.com that would be just the thing to get us over Lala. He included an e-mail invite for membership to the site. We had been toiling with discs for a week while we plotted our next move.
You know how when you meet someone and it's like hearing the Beatles for the first time and your heart shines? That's how we felt when we logged on. It's the same as Lala, but you can listen to all music over and over again without downloading it. There are no restrictions involved.
It's five dollars a month, too. Not like that, excuse the language, whore Lala, which just gave the shit out for free. Plus with Lala, the billing terms were confusing. We once accidentally ran up nearly $40 because they couldn't get the credit-card information correct.
The Lincoln option allows you to stream everything on the site, from your own personal playlists to the albums you add to your collection, from any computer anywhere. It's like having your iPod online. For five dollars more, you can download an app for your fancy space phones, or download your music to the phone itself.
For now, we are very happy with Rdio. They add new catalogs almost every day, like the My Morning Jacket surprise we got Monday. Bigger artists like Metallica and Paul Simon aren't on board yet but we can manage. Having the entire Motorhead and Rolling Stones post-ABKCO tunes at hand anytime is more than enough for us now. We also found an inspirational religious album from B.J. Thomas that we find oddly soothing.
We have two more invites left for the site, which at this point is in beta mode and by invite only. Just drop us a line here to get in on the fun. Just ignore all the garbage on our playlists, and don't judge our affinity for Juice Newton.
