I was in the middle of writing a post, arguing that Pandora’s user experience is so much better than lala’s because with Pandora I just type in the URL and music starts playing, while with lala I get nothing without doing the work of building up a playlist, searching for new artists, etc.
And then I noticed a new (or maybe not new?) lala feature — “Mix it up!”. When you type in an artist’s name on the main lala screen, you can autocreate an hour long Pandora-style playlist. While I still think that lala should play something as soon as you log in (you only go there to listen to music!), the ease of use of this feature to painlessly give me a mix of old/new music which I can control makes lala competitive for these “lazy listening” moments.
