Apple acquires streaming music company Lala

By on Dec 5, 2009 at 12:47 PM
General December 5, 2009

lala_home_logoCirculating reports suggest that Apple has purchased online streaming music company Lala. Lala offers a service that allows users to stream music from Lala’s massive online music catalog without any advertisements. It also provides users free streaming of a track once, with unlimited streams costing a mere 10 cents per track. Users can easily build up an online catalog of music that they can access anytime, anywhere they have access to a web browser. Think of Lala as an iTunes in the cloud, which most likely is the reason Apple bought the startup, but whether we’re looking at an actual new service coming or Apple’s interest in music licenses remains to be seen.

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  • http://www.highqualitykillers.com Troy Haas

    Since Lala offers a “Cloud” to upload your music library, hopefully Apple will choose to offer a native implement of that, so every iTunes track will go to that cloud if you choose, possibly a new feature of MobileMe

  • CJ

    This can’t be a good thing. I’ll wager that Lala isn’t long for this world.

  • Blue cheese

    All abort the Apple Express ….. Next stop … Your frikin pocket …. Dumbass ..

  • because I said so

    get ready to pay out the ass…

  • Jones

    I’m really bummed about this. I just discovered LaLa a few weeks ago and was sooo stoked. It’s awesome and it seemed to be the anti-Apple. I thought it would help lead the ‘revolution’ away from iTunes and Apple’s evil empire.
    I’m a little surprised Google let this happen. I thought they would’ve snatched up LaLa once they caught wind of Apple’s interest.
    This really blows but what can you do.

  • http://ran-o-matic.com ranomatic

    I read an article that stated the streaming licenses are all cancelled in the event of a Lala sell.

  • Maulik

    “DESTROY ALL MUSIC SERVICES!

    RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, ITUNES WILL RULE ALL!”

  • ty

    Resistance is futile, apple is a real life Borg entity lol

  • Bill

    Damn, I loved Lala; although Amazon mp3s seem to have higher bit rates.

  • crescentdave

    It hurts, because music software purveyors like Apple and Microsoft simply don’t have “best of breed programs for everyone. They’re all developed for the middle of the road consumer who seems happy with a somewhat dumbed down UI and options. Hopefully, Lala will survive in some sort of device/store independent entity, but those chances seem to approach zero.

  • http://www.robertglennsmith.com rg21

    I say get your lala on while you still can, cause Apple’s gonna freakin rob us blind. Smart company, sucks for the consumer.

  • pat

    why google is not saying anything?with all same
    reason they are against microsoft and now what apple doing is same.

  • Jarrett

    Apple just paid for some excellent talent who will help turn my iTunes account into a MobileMe application. Within a year I will be able to stream my media anywhere in the world to me connected MobileMe enabled devices. If that sounds bad to anyone here my guess would be you rather have a fragmented platform with little or no integration for digital devices. You don’t have to buy Apple products or services. There are plenty of companies who have verticle integration as a business model….. Oh wait there isn’t.
    Now, can you get some of your money back from Apple, yes you can, just buy and hold their stock for awhile. Just like when people complain about gas. If you are pissed about gas prices, buy some stock in the oil companies.
    Stop getting mad about companies practicing good business sense for their customers and their sharholders. Besides you were all the same people who cheered Microsoft coming out with their own music player all while screwing over their “plays for sure (I.e. Not at all)” partners.

    • Matt

      Actually, I rather like the fact that I’m not locked into an Apple box. I use Linux computers both at home and work. I don’t want to be forced by apple to get ‘cool’ services from them, which will mean buy THEIR hardware/software. LaLa gave me the ultimate cross platform experience. I was hoping I’d get an app for my Droid phone as well, but I guess I can kiss that goodbye. Thank Crapple!

      • Jarrett

        @ Matt,

        Congrats on using linux. Which “cool” services would Apple be forcing anyone to buy? I know Apple never made anyone buy their “Blackberry software” for syncing with iTunes, oh yeah, that is because Rim took it upon themselves to give their users some useful software. Are you sure one of those Linux distributors haven’t done the same for their users? Probably not. About that Droid phone, how is that fragmented platform working out for you? I am sure you can get Google and/or Motorola to build on that platform for you…. you know, build a huge ecosystem. Give you useful software to better the Android experience. Because Google and Motorola practice that verticle business model thing.

        Good luck to you, 25 years of Linux developement and you have had a very useful OS for 5 or so years now. Maybe in another 20 Google and some others will have a platform that you can actually recommend to just about anyone.

    • pat

      1. I scan smell of an apple employee from your reply.Marketing for apple.
      2. what customer’s your talking about? There might be hardly 5 % of apple customers out of 10% and 10-15% of iTune customers who want to stream their iTunes. so for over all 15% of customers you want to convince us that its is ok to kill other 85% of customers from there right to use lala.
      3.Buying apple share at this price doesn’t make sense to me. Just to get back my investment.
      so in the end what apple is doing in name of customers and shareholders is use our service and product or then fuck off. this is the language you are talking about. and i do not expect this kind of language from a company like apple.

      • Jarrett

        @ Pat,

        I am confused, did Apple force Lala to sell their company? No, they didn’t. Lala realized that they could not and would not become profitable with their service, so they did what anyone with a business does sell your company so you can make a profit and move onto the next thing.
        Just because you loved the service doesn’t mean anything really. To some hard working people it is still a business and has to make a profit.
        People who don’t understand the fundamentals should never speak.
        Go and start a business, then you tell me all about it.

      • pat

        hey hey,
        what nosense you are talking about, i am consumer, i have a right to say what i feel right.
        But keep your advice with you. Your argument is something like this, if you want know how much pain you get when accedent happens, you should learn driving.
        all these businesses run because of consumers,if everybody starts their own business, there will be no loayal consumer.

      • Ryan

        Yall are arguing over something that hasn’t even happened yet. Neither of you know what apple is gonna do with lala. Apple> windows> everything else

  • Joe The Plumber

    After what iTunes just did to my iPhone’s music libary, convert it all to other and I could do nothing to get it back so I had to restore the damn thing, I really hope this improves that damn program.

    • Jarrett

      I learned a long time ago that if I keep my permissions cleaned up regularly and then do fresh syncs with my iPhone. Sorry about your luck Joe, thank goodness nothing even remotely close has happened to me. What type of Mac are you running?

      • Joe The Plumber

        Actually its a Windows Vista machine that never gives me problems, iTunes was actually a joy to use on my computer also. I’ve had my iPhone for 13 months now and I never had something like this happen.

        What do you mean permissions? Oh and I synced my iPhone at least 4 times a week, guess everyone just has a nasty mistake but everything is up and running now. :)

      • Jarrett

        Well, that is amazing. You would actually be the first person I have ever heard of having a computer that never had a problem. Even my Mac has hiccups now and again.
        Permissions are basically “formulas” in which Applications are “set” to. If a persion is of your Application may lag and if enough permissions are off your entire system may lag.
        So if you have a Mac you open disk utilities and run a perissions verification. Then if any Applications permissions are off you run a permissions repair. Doesn’t take much time and for the most part is never even a small deal. Keeps your system running smooth.
        Also something a lot of Mac users don’t know to do on a weekly or so basis and before and after software updates. I don’t know what the equivalent on windows would be. My dad just says he spends about a day a month defraging his rig for the same results. And since I don’t use Windows I don’t know anything about that.

  • http://supbrah.tumblr.com Taha Kagadawala

    I think that Apple’s acquisition of music-streaming service Lala is another attempt to monopolize the music-license industry. However, I don’t think that this will be too effective, since there are myriads of other music-streaming services such as Grooveshark or even Youtube that people can freely listen to music at without even having to worry about the 10 cent unlimited streaming fee that comes with Lala. I’ve never been a fan of building up online libraries though. I’d rather have a “hard” copy on my computer.

  • FanNuts

    Sooooo… Apple jumping on to offer subscription based services? Ok. From all the fanboys incessant ragging on Zune Pass (and obvious misunderstanding of what a Zune Pass is), I would think Apple Fans would be against it. I don’t know, it wasn’t an idea that came from Apple and most of you all talk so badly about Zune Pass, so I just assume Apple fans won’t like it.

  • Eric

    And people talk about Apple fanboys being a negative, ill-informed bunch. These Apple haters take the cake.

    Nobody knows what Apple is going to do. But to the person who said they make middle-of-the-road stuff, I have to give you credit for a wildly imaginative distortion of reality. And people talk about Steve. Linux apologists make him look like an amateur.

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