I recently wrote an article about how to make Lala.com your music player of choice. Since the article received lots of views, I thought I would share additional tips about the useful features of the site after you sign-up for its free membership.

Note – this music sharing site is US-only, but perhaps as membership builds, the site’s reach will expand.

The LaLa Music Player Menu & Recommendations

First off, learn and take advantage of the blue player menu bar at the top of the Lala member page. This feature allows you to play music while also browsing through the site. So you can play, change, and stop songs no matter what page you’re visiting on the site.

You’ll also notice, as you’re browsing, that you can add songs to a queue. All you have to do is click the hotlink word “Queue” under the play button, and the song will be added to the queue list. And remember, you can listen to an entire song once for free on Lala, and then after the first listen, you can play it again for 30 seconds. I sample about three or four albums per week for free this way.

This is somewhat obvious, but be sure to notice that you can star/rate currently selected music. This is a great way to build playlists of favorite songs.

Finally, in terms of the player menu, notice also that you can share/recommend and post titles of songs to your Twitter and Facebook accounts and to other Lala members.

Song recommendations are one of Lala’s most useful attractions. Since I rarely listen to music radio stations anymore, recommendations from other Lala members are the way I learn about music I haven’t heard. So after you sign up and start hanging around Lala, you will want build a good contact list. Search for members who share your musical tastes, and you’ll be rewarded with some great recommendations. Also, of course, be sure to share your own recommendations.

View Recently Explored

Right under the player menu there’s another set of menu features. Clicking the little clock icon will reveal a pop-up window of the songs and albums that you have recently listened to and explored. This feature is really useful because when you’re browsing the site, you can revisit your browsing history. However, it would be useful if Lala made a way for members to create a wish list of songs on their account.

Collections

You don’t have to purchase a single song to be a member of Lala.com. You can actually upload existing songs on your computer to your Lala account for free. All your songs get added to your Collections. When you do purchase websongs and MP3s on the site, they too get added to your collections. You can easily click the My Collection button to get a linear view of your library, but I personally recommend using the album view of your collection. You do this by linking to your profile page and clicking on Collections. This album view will reveal only songs you’ve uploaded or purchased, not that the ones you have recently sampled.

Build Playlists

As you browse and listen to songs, you have several options for building playlists. This feature makes the online Lala music player almost like iTunes. Clicking on the Playlist button, you get a drop down menu where you can click, “Add to new playlist.”

When you use Lala”˜s Music Mover to copy songs on your computer to your Lala account, it will automatically create a playlist of those copied songs. You can also click on the My Collection>Add Songs button in the menu bar, and create new playlists, as well as add and remove songs to and from lists, as you do in iTunes. Though you can’t create smart albums like in iTunes, your Collections does include a few smart playlists of your recent adds and uploads.

Videos & Blurbs

Like other advanced websites, Lala.com includes a multimedia feature. Songs you listen to may include a related video, typically coming from YouTube.

Blurb Feature

Lala also features a Blurbs section, similar to Facebook. This is where you and your contacts can post messages to one another, and you also get to see the listening activity of your contacts. You can of course select to make your activity private by linking to the Privacy Settings of your account. The one option missing from this feature is that you can’t star favorite blurbs and link comments to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Nevertheless, the Blurbs feature makes Lala.com more than a simple music listening site. It’s great way to share and talk about music.

Lala.com doesn’t fit the needs of many music listeners, but if your computer is your main music player, Lala.com is a great option.

Let me know, if you’re a Lala.com listener, how you like the site.

Tagged: audio • music player • music sharing • music videos • playlist • songs • streaming music