That previously reported new digital music service Lala.com, which offers free full-track on-demand streaming of all the music in its catalogue, plus the opportunity to integrate your own record collection with said catalogue, has seemingly stopped offering the free streaming bit, despite that being a big part of the proposition when the new service launched.
Techie website Ars Technica notes: "Users noticed the disappearance first, complaining in company forums that full-song streaming had disappeared from the site and that only 30-second samples were available (unless one owned the album in question)". Ars Technica also reported that some users didn't like some of the recent refinements on the music service, and also that the service had become very slow of late.
Responding to those issues, Lala.com spokesman John Kuch told them: "Labels have been contacting us to get up and running on Lala.com. Many of our unique, forward-looking features have generated significant consumer excitement but have also generated an overwhelming load on our systems. To avoid falling short of consumer expectations, we're holding off on upgrading and returning some aspects of our offering until we can provide a fuller catalogue that meets the demand of consumers and includes music from a broader cross section of the industry".
Which doesn't really say a whole load, though the company does stress the loss of full-track on-demand streaming is only temporary.