Trade CD’s For a Dollar at LaLa.com

I’ve found a new way to kill time and it goes by the name of LaLa.com. LaLa takes a new approach to sharing music, you literally send your CD to the person that is looking for it. It works pretty easy, once you’ve created an account you list a few CD’s that you are willing to ‘trade’ and a list of CD’s that you would like to get. A few days after signing up you will receive your LaLa trading kit which contains five pre-paid envelopes and CD sleeves. It was only a matter of minutes that I had added a Peter Murphy CD that somebody wanted it. There is no obligation to send any CD if you can’t bear to give it up, if you do want to ship it you’re presented with the address of the person that wants it. Fill out the address portion of the envelope, stick the CD in and mail it.

Each CD that is sent to you will set you back one dollar and .49cents for postage, a percentage of the money is even given to the artist (though I’m not sure how that works). The more you send to others, the more you can get. So far I have three coming to me (two Portishead and a Beth Orton) and have sent two. The trick is finding albums that people want, because like I said if you don’t contribute LaLa limits how many you get. After all it wouldn’t be fair for somebody to just load up on albums for a dollar a piece and not give back to the community.

They do require that you agree the CD hasn’t been ripped to your computer before you ship it. But I have to wonder how much they seriously believe people are not going to rip them prior to saying bye-bye. Fortunately I have quite a collection of music I’m rather ashamed of (Janet Jackson, Motley Crue) and quietly shipping them away will improve my hipster status (I think anyway).

As many sites are these days LaLa is in beta and you need to be invited. Lucky for you I’ve got 40 invitations that I would just love to give away, first 40 emails addresses I get can join the fun.