Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Lala

Color.com Raises $41 Million For Building Location Photo- and Video-Sharing Social Network

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:30:35 +0000

Color.com is a service that came out of nowhere this week and shocked the press. The company has developed an application for smartphones that automatically lets you share photos with the people around you. Essentially they are calling it photo sharing with an “implied social network.”

What sets this service apart from Facebook is that people are interested in those around them that they have not met yet. Twitter, Foursquare, and Gowalla have proven this. Three major investors have put $41 million in Series A funding into Color.com. Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank have all put money into this round.

The team behind the company has an impeccable record as well. Color.com CEO Bill Nguyen recently sold Lala to Apple for $40 million. And co-founder Peter Pham is best known for launching BillShrink and Photobucket. DJ Patil, former chief scientist at LinkedIn had created how to benchmark and compare data accurately using location. “We have no interest whatsoever in being acquired,” stated Nguyen. “This is purely what we need to operate. There are real data needs and real capital costs.”

The homepage of Color.com states “simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album. There’s no attaching, uploading, or friending to do.”

[ReadWriteWeb]

Apple Buys Out Music Streaming Company Lala.com

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:44:59 +0000

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has bought out steaming music company Lala.com. Earlier this year Warner Music Group invested in Lala and it seems like their investment has paid off.

While this is good news for Lala’s board of directors, the acquisition may spell bad news for Lala users. Lala users can stream music an unlimited number of times for ten cents per song as of right now. Lala users may lose that ability if Apple starts to make some changes. Apple is highly interested in Lala’s engineering talent and technology for their music streaming in the cloud abilities. Lala has $35 million in funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Warner Music Group.

The financial details are unknown.

Warner Music Group’s $33 Million Investment In Imeem and Lala Written Off

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:43:41 +0000

Warner Music Group filed a financial report last week and it stated that they wrote-off $33 million in equity and debt from Imeem and Lala. Imeem is a music social network and Lala is a streaming website. Below is an excerpt from the report:

During the quarter ended March 31, 2009, the Company determined that its cost-method investments in digital venture capital companies were impaired largely due to the current economic environment and changing business conditions from the time of the initial investment. In accordance with FAS 157, the Company used Level 3 inputs to determine the fair value of these investments, which include management’s estimates of assumptions that market participants would use in pricing these assets. As a result, the Company recorded charges of $29 million, including $16 million to write-off its investment in imeem, inc. (“imeem”) and $11 million to write-down its investment in lala media, inc (“lala”) to its estimated fair value.

Imeem recently raised additional funding and is putting together an iPhone application. Imeem’s valuation was north of $200 million at one point but has fallen since. Warner invested $20 million in Lala and $15 million in Imeem.

[via VentureBeat]

Buy Web-Only Songs On Lala.com For $0.10

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:11:16 +0000

Lala Media Inc. is bringing a new idea to the digital music market. Downloading each song will cost less than $0.99, but the catch is that you can only listen to music when connected to the web. The cost per song is $0.10, but you cannot put it on your iPod. Lala’s new idea is backed by the four major record labels and 170,000 indie labels.

If you want to download music on to your hard drive, then it costs an additional $0.79. The hard drive download is DRM-free and beats the standard price of a single song serving on iTunes.

“I was so tired of hearing about all the compromises you have to make in order to make money,” stated Geoff Ralston, CEO of Lala. Ralston is referring to alternative methods of monetizing a service besides embedded advertising clips or paying a monthly fee. Ralston was previously chief product officer at Yahoo!

Lala also has a Facebook application where users can embed artist tracks on their profiles to share with friends. After buying a track for $0.10, it will appear in a user’s Lala library within 10 seconds. This new strategy comes at a time where MySpace Music recently launched and iMeem relaunched with an advertising partnership with the major label companies.

Within the last month, The Webcaster Settlement Act passed through the House and Senate, thus making it more affordable for web-streaming radio services to pay royalties to the major label companies.

Lala has about $3 million in the bank to keep their business afloat in case this idea flops. Lala took in about $9 million Series A in funding from Bain and Ignition around September 2007.

SEC Filing Shows That Warner Music Group Invested $20 Million in Lala.com and $15 Million in Imeem

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:38:41 +0000

Warner Music Group Corp. (NYSE:WMG) has invested in two Silicon Valley online music companies, Imeem and Lala.com. Imeem is a music, video, and photo sharing social networking website. Lala is a music streaming website.

Within the last year, imeem acquired SNOCAP and Anywhere.FM. imeem has over 24 million uniques per month and their widget reaches over 100 million users per month.

Lala.com has 5 million songs in their catalog that users can play for free. Users can add songs to their collection for 10 cents and buy MP3s for 79 cents.

Related Links:
1. imeem
2. Lala.com
3. Warner Music Group