I have a billion dollars running on that generic pretty girl not actually working there

A short list of terrible things from my experience with them:

• un-intuitive, confusing, non-user-friendly administrative panel that had me accidently bringing down my client’s website for a couple terrifying hours
• incompetent, rude, outsourced tech support
• their servers are running PHP5, supposedly, but it’s not optimized nor does it have all the features installed, so good luck trying to use many of the features of modern CMS’s (if you ask them about it, they will give you the runaround and try/fail to fix it)
• they will cache things (in my case, an .htaccess file) and keep them outside of your jurisdiction, which is, to put it lightly, problematic

(I could write more, but my blood is angry just writing those… and this was months ago I dealt with them!)

After a week or two of trying (and failing) to circumvent their shortcomings and a couple calls with their ridiculous customer support that had me pulling my hair out, I convinced my client to open an account with DreamHost and had their beautiful new website up and running in a couple hours.

From what I’ve read, they used to be a fantastic company based in the States, but then the owners sold it to an Indian firm and things went downhill fast. Yay, capitalism! Boo, unfortunately true stereotypes!

Final verdict: Run, do not walk, from ReadyHosting.com. I’ve worked with lots of hosting companies, and they were definitely the worst of them all.

Here are the highlights:

• Over 6 million songs to choose from, all properly licensed.
• 50 free song credits for signing up with 5 additional credits for each referral (limit 50)
• Access to full samples of each song (you can only sample a song for free once!)
• Ability to sync your computers library with Lala, virtually giving you a free portable library
• Social Networking – write blurbs, add friends, share music, get suggestions, etc
• Purchase songs for online listening for 10 cents per track
• Purchase songs for download for 89 cents per track
• Download format is MP3; playable on any computer or portable music device

How’s the Usability?

Lala is easy to use. The site has simple, intuitive navigation and the software that you use to sync your library is fool-proof. I had no problems finding anything that I needed and the site is darn fast. I had over 300 songs synced and ready to go in under 10 minutes with a 1mbps connection. The songs that weren’t in the Lala database were uploaded in a reasonable amount of time. I’m not sure if others can access them, but I’d be down with that.

This article is not about my taste in music.

6 Million Songs, Huh?

Yep, and a good variety of ‘em, too. I searched for artists ranging from Rihanna to Elliott Smith and was greeted by tons of songs, artist bios and a gaggle of widgets along the way. It might be worth noting that this site performs really well with modern college/indie/whatever music. Crystal Castles, Vampire Weekend, Voxtrot and many more are available with the same ease as T-Pain and Hank Williams.

This is what happens when you do a search on Lala

The Short-N-Skinny

I like it. The features are great, it’s easy to use, I’m keeping it. Want to check it out? Sign up for a free account here.

Here’s a playlist I made really quickly: