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

[Googlyhead]

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.

Surely that should mean foe the duration of the rental period they are obliged to provide a replacement free of excessive charges?

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.

You mean more influence than iTunes already has? It's already got the power to make or break a new release, and catapult tracks to fame from obscurity. It's the essential outlet / store; the difference is apple themselves don't use this to apply specific pressure as we're used to the labels doing at every opportunity.

 

[NiteWaves77]

That's a very specious headline image you chose to include, Eric. Shame on you, you snake.

 

[kernkraft]

Cloud? Not now or never.

Whatever some corporate personalities want and whatever some marketeers want us to believe, in 2010, The Cloud remains a myth.

 

[Winni]

god, how i hate them.

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

So I understand that you are no longer fueling their engines by purchasing/renting stuff on the iTunes store? The iTunes store is a gorgeous business for "them": Zero costs because the entire infrastructure is provided by someone else; from here on, it's all pure revenue. That's just beautiful for "them".

 

[Eric S.]

That's a very specious headline image you chose to include, Eric. Shame on you, you snake.

Uh, what?

 

[cocky jeremy]

These greedy dicks are the reason i download music from torrents. You should make more money because we can stream a single track to multiple devices? Guess what you arrogant pricks, i can put a cd in multiple cd players. Should you raise the price of those, too?

 

[lazyrighteye]

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.

Wow.
You clearly have no idea what it takes to make any kind of living as a musician.

 

[I WAS the one]

it will be a dream come true if you can buy songs anyware and use any computer to sync and upload. Just with name and password. WOW, they are entering a web space dominated by Google... OMG, wait. Apple vs Adobe... Apple vs Google, Apple vs Apple? The end?

 

[LouieSamman]

I want a cloud based iTunes. No more having to backup iTunes library.

 

[CplBadboy]

The music industry (like Apple) are just a bunch of greedy bastards They make me laugh about how they are so hard done by illegal downloads etc yet all their music exec's, singers, bands are all rich bastards cutting around with 30 man entourages, big cars blah blah blah. If i buy my music legally then i should be allowed to play it how the **** i want. iTunes cloud would be a great idea but it all comes down to how much money they can make between them. Its not that Apple are looking out for the customers its that Apple wants to make as much money out of as they can.

 

[tkermit]

Uh, what?

Wishful thinking:

 

[6andy6]

Wow.
You clearly have no idea what it takes to make any kind of living as a musician.

Ummm - and thats different from anyone of a number of minimum wage folk out there. Musicians something special that shouldn't be needing to work hard to make a living like most of us???

 

[lazyrighteye]

Ummm - and thats different from anyone of a number of minimum wage folk out there. Musicians something special that shouldn't be needing to work hard to make a living like most of us???

Sorry Andy, that's not at all what I was inferring.
Musicians are regular folk too: no more entitled to anything than anyone. Muskratbot simply spouted off a common misconception that non musicians have of musicians. I just couldn't let comments like "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" go unaddressed. But apparently I need to elaborate.

If anything, I suggest musicians work harder than "anyone of a number of minimum wage folk out there" (which is not to say I suggest musicians are any better/worse than anyone). Why? Because many, many, many bands I listen to or have played with - every single one of those musicians also carried a full time job. Meaning, after working an 8-hour day the average musician doesn't go home and watch 3 hours of TV before going to bed (not that there's anything wrong with that). Instead, they will either go to practice or go to a bar and perform until about 1 a.m., get up the next morning and do it allover again. Meaning, the average musician is more inline with the millions of us that have to work TWO fill time jobs to make a living.

And I'm not, for one second, asking for sympathy for the working musician. It's their choice. And most are all too happy to be able to share their music with anyone who cares to listen. And getting some form of payment for their efforts: a bonus.

So I just waned to callout a common misconception that if you're in a band, you're making a living doing nothing but "being a band." And I'm all too happy for those musicians in the bands that muskratboy listens to or sees. But they represent the vast minority, not the majority. Or, (more likely) unbeknownst to muskratboy, they all have regular 8-5 day jobs as well.

AND ALL THAT SAID (which is what I was hoping to avoid in my initial reply), I have a sneaking suspicion that iTunes streaming to any device (limited, much like it is today, to a predetermined number of devices) will come to iTunes and it will be free - but only to those that subscribe to MobileMe. And here's how it will work. Any MobileMe account holder can simply enable a "Share Everywhere" feature in iTunes. This will auto upload Apple a user's "iTunes Music Library.xml" file (as opposed to a user uploading massive GB worth of physical music files). Apple will then use the .xml file to point back to the user's iTunes account. And as long as that user has their iTunes open, they will be able to access their entire iTunes library, ripped songs, songs purchased form iTunes Store, etc. from a predetermined number of mobile devices. Thus, don't be surprised to see device storage capacities riddled moot. Why have an 64 GB iPod touch when it's capable accessing your 1 TB music library? And in eventually (easily a decade or more out), this will also effect laptops, where storing media (all media: Word docs, .psd files, etc.) will all be done in the cloud.

And that is a concept I can get behind.

 

[tkermit]

[...]storing media (all media: Word docs, .psd files, etc.) will all be done in the cloud.

And that is a concept I can get behind.

I'm paraphrasing from an article I've read yesterday - I think - but I'm unsure about how much we really gain if we're changing from the current situation of being tasked with managing our data - badly - to a situation where our task is to manage our privacy - badly.

 

[TennisandMusic]

Sorry Andy, that's not at all what I was inferring.
Musicians are regular folk too: no more entitled to anything than anyone. Muskratbot simply spouted off a common misconception that non musicians have of musicians. I just couldn't let comments like "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" go unaddressed. But apparently I need to elaborate.

If anything, I suggest musicians work harder than "anyone of a number of minimum wage folk out there" (which is not to say I suggest musicians are any better/worse than anyone). Why? Because many, many, many bands I listen to or have played with - every single one of those musicians also carried a full time job. Meaning, after working an 8-hour day the average musician doesn't go home and watch 3 hours of TV before going to bed (not that there's anything wrong with that). Instead, they will either go to practice or go to a bar and perform until about 1 a.m., get up the next morning and do it allover again. Meaning, the average musician is more inline with the millions of us that have to work TWO fill time jobs to make a living.

And I'm not, for one second, asking for sympathy for the working musician. It's their choice. And most are all too happy to be able to share their music with anyone who cares to listen. And getting some form of payment for their efforts: a bonus.

So I just waned to callout a common misconception that if you're in a band, you're making a living doing nothing but "being a band." And I'm all too happy for those musicians in the bands that muskratboy listens to or sees. But they represent the vast minority, not the majority. Or, (more likely) unbeknownst to muskratboy, they all have regular 8-5 day jobs as well.

AND ALL THAT SAID (which is what I was hoping to avoid in my initial reply), I have a sneaking suspicion that iTunes streaming to any device (limited, much like it is today, to a predetermined number of devices) will come to iTunes and it will be free - but only to those that subscribe to MobileMe. And here's how it will work. Any MobileMe account holder can simply enable a "Share Everywhere" feature in iTunes. This will auto upload Apple a user's "iTunes Music Library.xml" file (as opposed to a user uploading massive GB worth of physical music files). Apple will then use the .xml file to point back to the user's iTunes account. And as long as that user has their iTunes open, they will be able to access their entire iTunes library, ripped songs, songs purchased form iTunes Store, etc. from a predetermined number of mobile devices. Thus, don't be surprised to see device storage capacities riddled moot. Why have an 64 GB iPod touch when it's capable accessing your 1 TB music library? And in eventually (easily a decade or more out), this will also effect laptops, where storing media (all media: Word docs, .psd files, etc.) will all be done in the cloud.

And that is a concept I can get behind.

Only problem there is that an xml file is just a text file that can easily be edited. Available playlists would have to be generated and maintained server side.

 

[RazHyena]

Wow.
You clearly have no idea what it takes to make any kind of living as a musician.

A band that makes music that doesn't suck will do just fine.

There's a lot of "musicians" out there that just can't cut it.

 

[lazyrighteye]

I'm paraphrasing from an article I've read yesterday - I think - but I'm unsure about how much we really gain if we're changing from the current situation of being tasked with managing our data - badly - to a situation where our task is to manage our privacy - badly.

Heh. Totally. There will most certainly be security issues.
I was speaking both broadly and, apparently, inaccurately (re: the function of xml files) - both of which are not firsts.

 

[lazyrighteye]

Only problem there is that an xml file is just a text file that can easily be edited. Available playlists would have to be generated and maintained server side.

Interesting. Thanks.
Hmmm... How does something like Simplify work?

 

[lazyrighteye]

A band that makes music that doesn't suck will do just fine.

There's a lot of "musicians" out there that just can't cut it.

Wow - even funnier than muskratboy's assertion.
If only it were that simple...

 

[RazHyena]

Wow - even funnier than muskratboy's assertion.
If only it were that simple...

Sorry, but it is.

You seem to be taking this very personally. Why is that? No one wants to hear your band or something?

But I digress. What's this thread about again?

 

[4nNtt]

When will labels realize that a deal like this will help them sell more music? I think I'll go out and buy some cds from a second hand store to protest... you know you can't do that with iTunes content...

Also... making this a cloud service probably implies being able to re-download purchased music (like we can do on the AppStore)... wouldn't that make us more likely to buy digital music (and avoid the second hand stores that are much easier to find these days now that all the other music stores are going out of business)?

 

[lazyrighteye]

You seem to be taking this very personally. Why is that? No one wants to hear your band or something?

Nah, nothing pesonal.
Just an attempt to correct some misconceptions.

 

[Eric S.]

Wishful thinking:

Ah. Thanks. I didn't get the connection to the other Eric.

 

[iphones4evry1]

So what, Steve Jobs thinks he can just go around the world and tell all the other companies what to do? It's Steve's way, and that's that? I don't think so. Steve is becoming too controlling these days and it's starting to piss me off. I've always liked Apple, but they're starting to become too controlling.

 

[tbob]

Outraged at Lala Shutdown

I have been using Lala, and touting its benefits to all of my friends, for at least a year now. The service provides users with 4 great things:

1) Cloud music library
2) One-time listening to new tracks in their entirety
3) Social Music
4) Integrate new songs with my existing collection in listening queue

I was going to keep my mouth shut about Apple shutting down this service, but now that there's not even an iTunes answer to #1 in sight, I am outraged.

Thanks to Lala in regards to #2, I have bought far more music since I began using Lala than any other time in my adult life. Listening to an entire album without interruption or annoyance allows me to make a decision as to whether or not it's worth my money. #4 makes listening to new music a hassle-free experience. It saves me time not having to go to a band's myspace page, or click on some link once what I'm listening to ends. I can simply add the new music to my queue, and it comes up after the album I'm currently listening to has ended. Again, hassle-free, time-saving, and easy.

The iTunes store is clunky as compared to lala's quick responsiveness (I often log in on a slow internet connection), and the 30-second samples of songs in iTunes is useless to me, other than recognition of a song I already have heard. The iTunes store will do nothing to persuade me to purchase a song. It's a place I dread going, and only will go to purchase music if I have no alternative.

Thanks to Lala showing me what my friends are listening to (#3), I have also discovered, and purchased, more music in the past year than any other time in my adult life. I have formed friendships over music, and found people with similar listening tastes to follow. Were this type of social music to be integrated with something like Facebook or MySpace, in would come the obligation of 'friending', and the baggage that brings. In addition, the Social Music environment on Lala prevented you from being able to message anyone else (preventing needless bothering and spam). I fear its integration with other social media sites will open social music to spam, payola, and the social baggage that doesn't need to be associate with music.

As a student, I bounce between any of hundreds of computers on a daily basis. Using Lala was the nag-free solution to all of this. I can't see iTunes solving any of these problems, and I greatly resent Apple's decision to shut it down. Lala was a service that turned someone who otherwise would not have been a paying customer into someone who was glad to pay reasonable prices for songs and listen all day long.

At this point, it seems torrenting is a much easier way to listen to and own new albums.

I have been a fairly loyal Apple customer since I switched from PCs in 2005. The Lala shutdown, in addition to recent Apple moves, makes me re-think my decisions to buy the Adobe Suite for Mac instead of PC, to purchase Final Cut instead of Avid as my next video editing app, and to ever think about using Logic instead of Pro Tools.

Sincerely,
Tim Johnston