Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities. (collaborativeconsumption.com)

Short on time? Here’s the ultra-hip 2-min version:

Tweets about Apple acquiring Lala have been flooding Twitter for 3+ days now. A number of sources have provided news and analysis on the acquisition. Personally I think Apple aims to move iTunes to the web in an effort to control mobile cloud-based music streaming via iPhones and iPods. Mobility is paramount, and I think that buying Lala was a sound move for Apple. By combining the best features of iTunes and Lala, Apple should be able to make a more seamless streaming experience with a simpler payment process—a simple payment process leads to more people buying. You can bet there will be an iPhone app that enables buying and simplifies the buying process.

Die-hard Lala users hope that Apple will keep Lala’s key features in tact, and many are looking forward to new feature possibilities. Hopefully with the help of its Lala’s developers, Apple will be able to build onto Lala’s platform making music more accessible. Lala enables users to upload mp3′s from their computer so they can access them from anywhere through their Lala account. In Lala’s words, “Play it anywhere on the web. Most of your music will be matched to Lala’s catalog [and] any remaining unmatched MP3s can be uploaded to Lala.”

A massive user-submitted music library is being built in the cloud. What I’d really like to see is for everyone’s uploads to be available to everyone, much like they are in Grooveshark—a free music streaming service that lets users upload tracks to the cloud. Let’s compare their relative popularity with other some streaming/download services—Spotify, MOG, and Amie Street—in the graph below:

What’s worth noting about MOG having the most visitors is that MOG markets itself more as a social network—their tagline is “Discover People Through Music and Music Through People.” Having social features clearly plays a big role in web-based music discovery—it’s social music discovery. Extended stats and analysis are to follow in Part 2 later this week.

• Photo: Lala Apple Logo Mashup by VirtualMusictv/Flickr
• View Lala screenshots.

Friend recommendations seem to be the hottest source—whether they are in person, on the phone, or through the web. We discover music through sharing in mainstream social networks—Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace—and also through music-specific social networks like Last.fm, Imeem, Grooveshark, TheSixtyOne, and Blip.fm. Mainstream networks are broadening their music capabilities, and music applications within them are going to be pretty huge. Smaller music sites that may not survive on their own might do better as Facebook, Twitter, or smartphone applications. The latest, big-name buzz has been about MySpace’s iLike purchase, Spotify—whose potential entrance to the U.S. may be through Facebook’s doors—and Grooveshark, whose iPhone application may be arriving in the future. Imeem—which started as a social network—made a complete shift into the social music service that it is today. YouTube is a major discovery source and video links are widely shared via email, IM, and Facebook. Ustream.tv is live video platform that can be used to discover music through live interaction—a crucial feature that I emphasized in my debut VirtualMusic.tv forecast.

Before one can recommend music to their friends, they have to discover it themselves first. They are, say, early adopters. This initial discovery is increasingly enabled by open, social, music discovery sites (see the clickable link cloud above) and through integration of their applications with the existing mainstream networks I mentioned above. This integration from site to site is a key usability factor that facilitates sharing and alleviates the need for users to ‘sign up’ for a million sites. For example Twisten.FM is a nice Twitter–Grooveshark blend that lets me hear a playlist made from the people I follow on Twitter, and there are a number of other applications built for sharing music on Twitter alone. The speed that information is shared on Twitter is awesome, and I often discover new artists through Twitter convo. Open remixing applications like Indaba Music are another up-and-coming source of discovery. The others ways exposed in our brainstorm include movies, live shows, videogames, bittorrent and p2p file-sharing, fan-funding sites (more about these in an upcoming article), magazine articles, blog posts—including mp3blog posts via aggregation sites like elbo.ws—and all types of radio—traditional, satellite, and web-based. We’ve seen a definite shift away from download sites and towards streaming sites. But what did we miss? How/where do you discover music? Please give us your say below.

• How Do You Discover Music? by VirtualMusictv//Flickr
• Music Discovery Link Cloud by VirtualMusictv/Flickr

Read more posts tagged Music Discovery here.