Lala.com is a semi-socialnetworking website that hooks up people looking to discard the cds they don’t want in exchange for the cds other people don’t want. The charge? $1, plus 75 cents shipping. And they provide the envelopes. From the PSU Daily Collegian:

The site’s logistics are simple — to find music, users browse other member’s profiles or search by album title, genre or artist among a broad range of albums from newly released titles to old school classics.

It’s even got a non-profit musician support component:

The music-sharing organization helps to support working musicians through their charity, The Z Foundation, Kuch said. The Web site has a definition of a working musician as “any individual who has performed live or on a recorded release in the last year and whose music-related income accounts for more than half of their total income.”

Bill Nguyen, co-founder of lala.com, said he is glad to see musicians finally getting compensated for their work.

“For the first time, musicians will receive economic support directly from their fans,” he said.

Twenty percent of each traded CD goes to The Z Foundation, Kuch said.

“Giving back even 20 percent can help them buy more studio time or new equipment, so they can make more music,” Sung said. The money collected by the Z Foundation provides musicians with medical and dental care, he said.

As always “for the first time” is pretty far from accurate, but it’s a great idea nonetheless: a nice legal alternative to illegal downloading, and gets the object into the hand for those who still like to read liner notes and see the pictures.