Apple Acquired Lala Music Service to Shut Down May 31st

[irahodges]

I am on Lala right now listening to Walls of Jericho by Helloween. Lala was awesome because you could find some really old off the wall stuff, listen to the entire CD, and purchase. The worst thing is buying a CD because that 30 second clip sounded bad ass to find out the rest of the song was garbage. What lala did was offered people the ability to try-before-you-buy without resulting to torrents. If Apple integrates with itunes I hope it stays web based. Lala was a great service but I knew this day would come once Apple bought them out.

I loved the Lala feature to listen to a song in it's entirety but they also took it further with amazing integration for connecting with friends, seeing what they were listening to, and recommending songs to them.

On top of that, Lala allowed you to purchase the streaming rights for 10 cents which really got me buying a lot more music that I would never want to own, but would listen to then because it was pertinent to my mood.

 

[irahodges]

streaming vs. subscription

I notice some people posting about streaming on here are confusing it with a subscription:

I'm not saying that Apple won't incorporate a subscription model in the future, but one of the great things about Lala was that it was a streaming service, not a subscription service. Streaming allowed you to listen to your songs anywhere you had an internet connection - without storing songs on your local hard drive. You could upload music you owned and stream it from any computer within your web browser. That is what I think Apple will do with the Lala integration into iTunes, at least thats what I'm hoping for. I don't want to pay another monthly fee!

 

[*LTD*]

Actually, you're wrong. Lala service is in place until May 31 for existing users. The agreement I signed when I created a Lala account said that I had 50 free credits to use while I had my Lala account. If I have until May 31 to use my account, Apple should give me the credits to use while I continue to have a Lala account.

Apple hasn't mentioned anywhere that they were doing away with the free credits. They could have notified users that they were being eliminated, giving a grace period before they were removed. It's poor form.

Apple doesn't need to keep LaLa's previous policies in play. LaLa is under new management. What's poor form is a few users bellyaching over it because they have trouble understanding that the service was acquired by someone else and thus all bets are off.

Looking for someone to blame? Blame the previous owners who couldn't keep the service profitable. Them's the breaks.

Apple threw you bone with iTunes Store credit. Use it.

 

[cyb1851]

Apple doesn't need to keep LaLa's previous policies in play. LaLa is under new management. What's poor form is a few users bellyaching over it because they have trouble understanding that the service was acquired by someone else and thus all bets are off.

Looking for someone to blame? Blame the previous owners who couldn't keep the service profitable. Them's the breaks.

Apple threw you bone with iTunes Store credit. Use it.

Let's not confuse things here. Apple didn't give me credit in the iTunes store for my free credits. So, they didn't throw me a bone, as you suggest. This might be the breaks, but it is only because Apple decided not to honor the agreement I have had with Lala. The agreement was acquired by Apple when it acquired Lala.

 

[rstansby]

Within iTunes is the option to use Apple Genius. This 'knows' all the songs within your iTunes library. Say if Apple could use this data so you can stream a copy of a song you own on iTunes from a centralised Apple server (a copy of each song is held by Apple). This removes the need for large capacity iPhones/ iPod Touches/ iPads. Just a thought, but would seem like a natural evolution.

Not only does this make sense, but it is almost exactly how one feature of Lala works. You sync your library with their servers, and you are then allowed to download songs you own at will. This doesn't stop anyone from having a computer or iPod full of music to use when they don't have internet access, it just adds to the number of ways that a person can use the music that they have purchased.

 

[Prof.]

Grammar Nazi pls go, nobody thinks you're cool.

NO! I was here first! You go!

 

[iPadPublisher]

SJ: All your streams and clouds are belong to us!

Ha ha ha ha ha! Some jokes never die.

 

[a104375]

I hate when companies buy up competition and then change them or close them so everyone who uses that service has to find something new. Personally I think Apple needs to chill out and stop trying to rule the world, I'm cool with Mac's and iPod's but stop taking over the internet world Apple we don't want it.

 

[iPadPublisher]

The new Apple is even worse than Microsoft. Closing competition and closing even iPhone OS and probably the Mac if they can. Just imagine a world without Microsoft and only Apple. Time to switch to Windows?

WOW. How'd we go from Apple closing a purchased subsidiary to "It's Windows Time!" ???

Do the research, Microsoft has bought and closed smaller companies for a variety of reasons, either because they wanted the technology, the customer base, the people working there, etc. Apple isn't the first to do this, and note that key LaLa.com people are staying on... there's more to come from this story.

 

[Old Muley]

Good riddance to Lala. The day they ceased being a music trading site is the day I quit.

 

[Rhosfelt]

I sent this as a pitch to Apple back in June 2009, got the mock up (primitive as it may be) and metadata to prove it...

 

[chrisworld]

Lala.com's stream quality was absolutely terrible. first of all the streams were LESS than 128kbps and mp3, and the fact that all you needed to do was wait more than a day or simply clear your browser cookies to listen to full length songs again at the same poor streaming quality as purchased websongs makes me laugh and not feel bad for people who wasted money buying from that stupid cloud streaming service. Man, I know people love convience, but really let's not move to a world of streaming music and swashy sounding music. I hope apple streams at 256 or greater in AAC streams if they do decide to go cloud. Even though I still will not submit to or use a cloud service. Local private iTunes libraries ftw, I would be a fool to keep my music on the Internet out of grasp of a physical backup copy, reguardless if apple owns that cloud database or some small mom and pop company.