Apple's Discontinuation of Lala Streaming Music Service Not Likely Leading to Imminent Launch of Web-Focused iTunes

[Rocketman]

One thing we do know, is Apple has said how they think it ought to be. It is now simply a matter of time when Apple has sufficient market share or consumer feedback to press it onto license holders.

The license holders are too short sighted to realize convenience is what used to sell vinyl to teenagers, and convenience is what is going to sell content to consumer device users.

Rocketman

 

[Jaro65]

I'd like to see Apple offer something similar to the Rhapsody service, but with better 3G support.

I'm hoping that is exactly why they bought Lala.

 

[e-coli]

Dear recording industry,
I will never, and I mean never, pay extra money for the privilege of listening to the music I've already purchased just because I choose to listen to it in a different manner.

Besides, there are already plenty of ways to do this already...for free.

Please update your Jurassic business model.

 

[RalfTheDog]

So a licence to listen to music in certain ways (because that is exactly what streaming will be treated as) will cost more then it does now?

They just don't get it.

The way I read it, you can download from your computer to your iPod or Apple TV just as you do now for free. If you have a song on your computer in NYC and you want to listen to it in LA (or just down the street) you can stream it from Apple servers even if it is not downloaded to your device.

This is to give you access to music or movies you own, but you don't have with you.

What you can now do for free, you will be able to do for free. If you want to do extra stuff, the record labels will make Apple charge more.

 

[louis Fashion]

Starbucks Sighting

I saw a guy at Starbucks yesterday, he had this cool device that could play a CD. I don't think I have seen any of these thingies in stores yet. I was going to ask him where he got it, but he looked kinda scary..

Good idea though, pay for the CD and that's it, no music industry trolls attempting to get you to pay five times for the same song.

 

[irahodges]

The way I read it, you can download from your computer to your iPod or Apple TV just as you do now for free. If you have a song on your computer in NYC and you want to listen to it in LA (or just down the street) you can stream it from Apple servers even if it is not downloaded to your device.

This is to give you access to music or movies you own, but you don't have with you.

What you can now do for free, you will be able to do for free. If you want to do extra stuff, the record labels will make Apple charge more.

What do you consider the extra stuff? Is streaming the song you don't have with you "extra"? I believe the majority of people that commented, including me, are saying that is unacceptable.

 

[dba7dba]

I can see how apple might be interested in this. Just think of the service request calls they get from customers because their HD is FULL, and most of the time it's because of iTunes.

 

[Big Kahuna]

"This is gonna replace CD's soon; guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."

Agent K - Men in Black

 

[louis Fashion]

Quote of the Day

"This is gonna replace CD's soon; guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."

Agent K - Men in Black

LOL - I still have a turn table and record albums!

 

[BJMRamage]

PulpTunes does this already.....for FREE


I can turn on iTunes/PulpTunes and leave my computer connected. BOOM! i type in an address and I can listen to ALL of my music!

and even DL it if i want on the other machine.

PULPTUNES
http://www.pultunes.com


awesome.

 

[shervieux]

This is the greed of the music industry (although I have friends who are musicians and they disagree with me). To them, they only rent us the music, meaning if our original CD, Tape, whatever is destroyed we are to buy another one; not have a backup of it.

the record labels also want performance fees - ie, anytime a song is played on the radio, TV, used in a Movie, used in a sountrack, or even a 30 sec sampling. If the law goes through, then this will shut down many radio stations and music retailers (both retail and web), as they could not afford the costs.

There used to be a time when musicians loved that a radio station would play their music as it meant exposure and lead to concert deals and records sales. Now, they want to charge the radio stations for that.

Many radio stations are already saying if the cost is too high, they will not play songs from certain record labels, or they will shut down. Especially if they are listener supported rather than support through ads and sponsors.

 

[williedigital]

dead issue

Music will soon be free. With the amount of overlap in US taste, I bet you can fit 50% of people's total itunes library on a 1tb drive, 75% on a 2tb, and 90% on a 4tb. At the typical rate of hard drive capacity increases, the whole internet trading of music will go away. It will be simply "oh, you bought a new hard drive? let me copy you meta itunes library v 1.41. You can take it home in an hour." The horse is out of the bard on this one, so labels are looking for any way to get people to pay for convenience (mobile streaming) or other added value (genius picking).

 

[theneweyes]

This is the greed of the music industry (although I have friends who are musicians and they disagree with me). To them, they only rent us the music, meaning if our original CD, Tape, whatever is destroyed we are to buy another one; not have a backup of it.

the record labels also want performance fees - ie, anytime a song is played on the radio, TV, used in a Movie, used in a sountrack, or even a 30 sec sampling. If the law goes through, then this will shut down many radio stations and music retailers (both retail and web), as they could not afford the costs.

There used to be a time when musicians loved that a radio station would play their music as it meant exposure and lead to concert deals and records sales. Now, they want to charge the radio stations for that.

Many radio stations are already saying if the cost is too high, they will not play songs from certain record labels, or they will shut down. Especially if they are listener supported rather than support through ads and sponsors.

Save for the few bestselling artists, most musicians you listen to don't make any money. Times are a-changin'

 

[Eduardo1971]

Change the headline!

For second after reading the headline I thoughtr "Wow! Apple is bringing straming audio to iTunes!"

Imagine my disappointment when I realized this was not the case.

 

[casik]

BAH I don't understand why hardly anyone sees the way this will work efficiently! You won't be syncing your actual music files to their servers, but instead upload something that shows them what files you have purchased and will only display those files in your "online" iTunes library. I don't think they will give you the ability to listen to files NOT purchased off iTunes (in typical Apple fashion). This way you are only uploading small XML files or whatever and not a 250gb+ library from your computer.

All I can say is record labels DO get in the way of technological advancement.

 

[Mac-Michael]

Whoever supplies the hardware to the record industries should make them pay every time they use it. Make 'em pay when they turn on their phone or restart a computer. Damn greedy bastards.

 

[*LTD*]

One thing we do know, is Apple has said how they think it ought to be. It is now simply a matter of time when Apple has sufficient market share or consumer feedback to press it onto license holders.

The license holders are too short sighted to realize convenience is what used to sell vinyl to teenagers, and convenience is what is going to sell content to consumer device users.

Rocketman

You nailed it.

 

[muskratboy]

claiming that offering users the ability to stream a single purchased track to multiple devices should require the labels to receive greater revenue than they do under the current system

god, how i hate them.

the sooner we can put a knife into their kind of "service", the better.

 

[muskratboy]

Save for the few bestselling artists, most musicians you listen to don't make any money.

this is outright not true.

i guess it depends on what "any money" means.

many, many, many bands i listen to make a living doing nothing but being bands.

heck, many LOCAL bands make a living being in a band.

rich, they aren't. but it's a living.

 

[muskratboy]

The horse is out of the bard on this one

and i'm sure the bard is very, very happy about that.

 

[fifthworld]

I don't want to own music anymore. I just want to pay for the right to listen to a stream of it. Pay once to stream forever a song, or pay every time I listen to a song will be fine. Whatever. I don't care, I already spent to much money on these silly LPs, tapes, CDs, SACDs, AACs, etc. Lala, with its 10¢ to listen to a stream of a song forever, was very close to my ideal of a modern business distributing music. iTunes, Amazon, and all those business selling music that I have to download and store on my device are like prehistoric dinosaurs.

 

[BJWanlund]

The only way to fix this garbage heap of a situation with the labels and apple (and everyone else) is compulsory licensing. Thats the only way to take the labels and their heel-dragging, head-up-their-ass approach out of innovation.

Amen to that. I wish they'd just do that, and then they have license to do basically whatever they want, they basically have to get approval on everything (which they do anyway) but the compulsory licensing agreement would make the label discussions take MUCH less time than they (assumedly) already do.

Someone want to clarify the reasoning here?

I pay 99 cents to own the song, but have to pay more if I decide to stream it to my ipod, iphone, ipad, or foreign computer when I'm away from my home computer?

Actually, it's $1.29 for 99.99% of iTunes tracks now, but yeah, if the price goes up even more, it's curtains for the RIAA's still-recovering music sales.

So a licence to listen to music in certain ways (because that is exactly what streaming will be treated as) will cost more then it does now?

They just don't get it.

No, they don't. Neither do TV and movie studios, and anyone else who is dragging their feet on iTunes's incredible innovations. I'm not saying that iTunes is necessarily perfect as is.

But seriously, a Cocoa rewrite is badly needed for iTunes, which may be why they will be doing an iTunes release during WWDC, basically saying something to the effect of, "Hey, we completely rewrote iTunes in Cocoa, reducing filesizes and the spaghetti mess of code structures in the process, along with using better cross-platform coding methods to reduce feature and platform disparity, and less time spent on cross-platform coding. Here's some great new tools, let's see what YOU do with it" or something like that.

They wouldn't release a new iTunes during WWDC unless it was important to some kind of improvement in Macintosh/iPhone/iPod touch/iPad development. And yes, I used ALL of those to illustrate that maybe, with the consolidation of all the ADC memberships into one Mac Developer Program (and possibly a consolidation of the now 2 Developer Programs), that we will see great strides in development for ALL flavors of OS X.

BJ

 

[strawmanruss]

Because if I buy a CD, I should pay for every device in which I wish to play the disc, ne?

 

[shervieux]

Save for the few bestselling artists, most musicians you listen to don't make any money. Times are a-changin'

ok, let me change that to "This is the greed of the record labels". you're right, that is why most musicians are firing their managers and record labels. the musicians themselves are lucky if they see 5% to 10% of the money.

Most I know are now independent. they go to a minor recording studio, or have a recording studio in their home. burn their own CD's and sell them at performance or their own websites. plus they network with other musicians and put up websites that offer multiple artists.

 

[Eric S.]

the record labels also want performance fees - ie, anytime a song is played on the radio, TV, used in a Movie, used in a sountrack, or even a 30 sec sampling. If the law goes through, then this will shut down many radio stations and music retailers (both retail and web), as they could not afford the costs.

There used to be a time when musicians loved that a radio station would play their music as it meant exposure and lead to concert deals and records sales. Now, they want to charge the radio stations for that.

I thought they already got that. Don't radio stations have to keep count of the number of times they play songs and pay royalties to the record companies?

There are certainly costs for using songs on TV and in movies, potentially huge costs for popular artists.