Lala began life in 2006 facilitating CD trades where users would post what they had to trade as well as what they wanted in return with the site making a few cents per trade. With the 2007 introduction of Lala 2.0 the site moved into the digital music arena by offering its users the ability to upload MP3s to digital lockers for streaming to wherever those users had Web access.

Now Lala is offering two new features. The first is advertising-free, no-cost music, which in the Lala world means granting users one free listen per stream, after which, the user may purchase unlimited listens to the same stream for 10 cents. However, if users want to purchase the streams as downloadable, DRM-free MP3s, then they must pay anywhere from 79 cents to 89 cents for the music files, with the original 10 cents paid for the stream deducted from the price.

The second new feature is reminiscent of the old MP3.com MyMP3 service, where Lala matches songs from the users’ libraries against its own MP3 library and then streams those songs back to users upon demand. The difference between the new Lala service and the old MyMP3 service is that Lala has major-label backing while the latter ended up on the losing end of one of the biggest music infringement lawsuits in history.

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