Apple finalizes Lala purchase
It turns out that the rumors were both short-lived and true. Apple has completed a deal to purchase music-in-the-cloud pioneer Lala, almost surely to update the iTunes business model.
Lala is a Web site which allows members to legally create online shareable “playlists” of their own uploaded music which can be used play full length songs for other registered Lala members, purchase MP3s, stream music on a one-time basis or as inexpensively purchased “web songs,” buy new CDs from the Lala store, trade original CDs by USPS mail for $1 per trade plus 75¢ postage, leave blurbs on other members’ pages, and participate in the community forums. It has a little bit of everything.
Perhaps the most important thing that Lala has that Apple does not is a firm grip on the technology necessary to get tunes off a user’s local device and into that great data cloud in the sky, according to a Reuters article. Although iTunes is the current champion online music store, buyers have to find space on their smartphones and MP3 players to store all the music that they buy. That’s not a problem on the home computer, with all of those hundreds of gigabytes of hard disk storage, but most users really want their music on the much smaller flash drives of their portable devices, where music has to comete with applications and photos, among other things.
Enter the technology and knowhow that Apple has just purchased along with Lala. This could herald a large change in iTunes, certainly the largest since Apple started the program. It would appear that Apple has been getting some pressure in the iTunes department from music streamers like Lala, MySpace Music and Spotify. It would appear that the purchase of Lala may well be a way to shortcut the development necessary to get into the realm of streaming music in the cloud. Making that move would bring them into line with the newer streaming service and help Apple to hold their current lead in the music arena.
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January 26th, 2011
excellent, I found your site again, lost it cuz my sister cleared the history on me had to search and search to find you. sweet :)