Comments on: Apple's Purchase of Online Music Streaming Service Lala to Take iTunes to the Clouds?

By: Chris K

Chris K — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:24:25 +0000

Yeah but did LaLa have their service synced with Google they way it is now before Apple purchased them? it's a genius idea and changes the way the world looks up music now.

By: Therealtruth

Therealtruth — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:56:05 +0000

@chrstphr.cross

so a zune pass allows you to listen to any song on demand....for free. Cool.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:45:44 +0000

Apple bought Lala for a lot of reasons, not just to stream music from the cloud. Apple has a lot of cash from selling iPhones now, so they can make strategic purchases as it works on its iPhone content. There's no reason they would have employees prior to this point who are familiar with cloud based music distribution services. Also, the Lala crew has contacts in the music industry who helped them sign the deals behind Lala's services.

These deals don't extend to Apple just because they purchased Lala. That's why phone calls are being made to those contacts in the music industry to bring similar services to Apple. At the same time, they are being rightfully "cautious," given the past history between Apple and the recording industry. It's one thing to allow one start-up to try out a novel business model for selling and distributing music content for a limited period of time, in order to see whether it proves to be a good idea. It's quite another to add to the existing services of the iTunes Store. Every record company conglomerate will now have to make their own calculations to see if Lala's business model and services extended to an enormous entity like the iTunes Store is going to be advantageous for them.

The main advantage of Lala to Apple is that it allows the iTunes Store to exist outside of the world of computers and Apple products, so to speak. In order to justify buying songs from the iTunes store now, you need a computer running iTunes (OSX or Windows, but not Linux), or an iPhone/iPod Touch that can purchase songs from the iTunes Store directly (and then back-up the songs on a computer running iTunes). Because the iTunes Store library is not 100% DRM free, another portable mp3 player won't always work. AAC support is not universal, in part because the main source of AAC files has been the iTunes Store and has some DRM in it already. All of these facts have represented a big obstacle to expanding the reach of the iTunes Store.

The upshot is that the iTunes Store could become a source of music content for every smartphone, MID, HTPC, or computer that can stream music from the web and/or run a specialized application for that purpose.

By: Steve N.

Steve N. — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:29:58 +0000

You guys have a fault line running through your office or something?

By: guinness0514

guinness0514 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:52:04 +0000

I am bumbed cause I was waiting for the lala app. I use the service and it is really nice. With Apple buying them. I am beginning to wonder if we will see the lala app at all.. sob

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:01:24 +0000

What happens when we go off a network or have slow Edge service? Is it entirely network reliant?

By: chrstphr.ross

chrstphr.ross — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:51:51 +0000

so, Apple had to buy another service to do this?

The Zune Pass has allowed me to listen to everything on the Zune Marketplace through any browser for months...