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I still will never rent music.

I used to feel that way but when you own all the most influential music to you, you'll want to experiment more. Pandora and Last.fm simply don't give you enough control. If Apple gives you the ability to dowload 10 free songs a month (like the Zune which is essentially an album) while on an iPod, it can be enough.
 
I still will never rent music.

I’ve never understood this argument. Wouldn’t you rather pay $180 per year to have unlimited access to the iTunes Store via streaming and timed downloads? Instead of $1.29 per song?

It’s all going on your iPod, iPhone, iTunes or Apple TV anyway.

Personally, I think it’s one of those things at face value sounds like an awful idea, yet in practice it works very well.

Most new music is not worth “keeping” anyway. It’s not like I’m going to pass the latest Jay-Z album on to my future kids.

Microsoft is really leading with the Zune Pass. $15 per month for unlimited downloads (timed), Web site streaming and you get to keep 5 MP3 songs (up to $6.45 worth) per month. That’s a good deal — if only it would play on my iPhone.
 
I’ve never understood this argument. Wouldn’t you rather pay $180 per year to have unlimited access to the iTunes Store via streaming and timed downloads? Instead of $1.29 per song?

It’s all going on your iPod, iPhone, iTunes or Apple TV anyway.

Personally, I think it’s one of those things at face value sounds like an awful idea, yet in practice it works very well.

Most new music is not worth “keeping” anyway. It’s not like I’m going to pass the latest Jay-Z album on to my future kids.

Microsoft is really leading with the Zune Pass. $15 per month for unlimited downloads (timed), Web site streaming and you get to keep 5 MP3 songs (up to $6.45 worth) per month. That’s a good deal — if only it would play on my iPhone.

I agree with everything you said except the fourth paragraph. I'd recommend you REALLY listen to Radiohead, Bon Iver, Animal Collective & Neko Case. As for Jay-Z, I suggest you at least try to understand his earlier albums like Reasonable Doubts, Hard Knocks Life & The Black Album. Blueprint 3 is ok but, like all artists, not as good as his earlier albums. There hasn't been this many quality albums made now since the early-mid 90s.
 
Tried searching for a song on google lately? Maybe the lyrics to the new Lady Gaga song? There's a big link at the top of the results page to a player allowing the user to listen to the song from Lala.

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance Lyrics Search on Google

Obviously, just from the virtue that Google has made Lala it's go-to for song samples makes Lala worth it's weight in gold pressed latinum.

Now all Apple has to do is to convert Lala listeners into iTunes buyers...
 
I've been playing around with LaLa since hearing Apple was interested and it really is a brilliant business model. The key difference between LaLa and other streaming services is that you pay 10 cents per song for the right to keep it up on the cloud available for streaming from wherever forever. (They give you 25 of these for free to start - classic drug pusher tactic ;-) This gives you "ownership" and the song doesn't evaporate if you don't pay some monthly fee. (Of course if Apple is the one doing this you can be sure they won't go out of business anytime soon and take your music away) You also get the ability to preview any song or album in it's entirety one time which is really really useful for deciding whether you want to buy it or not. And the 10 cents counts towards the 89 cents download charge if you really want a copy for your hard disk. I can see this sort of model being used for far more than just music distribution.
They also make it possible to scan your hard disk and make copies of all the songs you already have available on the cloud for streaming for free. Pretty darn cool!!! Of course the information about what's in your collection is invaluable for marketing new music specifically to you. But iTunes does that already anyway so no real change there. LaLa had an iPhone app in for approval and agreements with google that let people play a song from a google search so I'm sure Apple decided to assimilate it before it became an even bigger deal.

wow 0.10 cents to stream a track whenever and forever seems awesome, and i haven't checked LaLa out but no monthly fee as well? and it adds all your itunes songs (the ones it can find) to your Cloud library free of charge.. beyond awesome... it is like having music anywhere (sort of like MobileMe for music) that is AWESOME, hope Apple doesn't mess this up... wonder if we will see a LaLa app supporting streaming over WiFi :D
 
Wow!!

I was impressed before but now I'm blown away. It took a couple of hours but I downloaded the LaLa Music Mover and it found 2,781 of my 3812 song iTunes Library already available on LaLa and thus also available immediately on the cloud with my associated iTunes playlists etc. and then started "transcoding" another ~774 songs and uploading them to their server. That's estimated to take ~ 14 Hr.s but I can already access and use all the ones it matched. And whenever I restart the music mover program it resumes "transcoding" and uploading. So far the sound quality of what I have tried is very impressive and the interfaces are very slick. This already feels allot like "where the puck will be." No wonder Apple grabbed them!:D
 
I still will never rent music.

My sentiments exactly, though as an early user of lala I am a firm believer in the talent they have there, I think it's a great purchase. I kinda thought there was no way apple would EVER allow the lala app and I guess this was one way to kill it (or take it for themselves :)
 
I still will never rent music.

At this point in time it is clear that we don't buy recorded music, but just the physical supports where the music is stored (or the ability to store it in our own devices) along with the right to listen to it. To actually own recorded music means to own the IP of that music (and this is, in some cases, oh-so-expensive). So, what's wrong with just buying the right to listen to recorded music and skip the part of buying physical supports (or the ability to record it in our own devices)?

Great move Apple, looking forward to integrate music streaming in my iPhone (multitasking included).
 
I agree with "jaw04005". Since I cannot tether my iPhone to my mac at work and listen to it's music, a streAming option like thus would be helpful to me. Very interested in where this goes...I like that they aren't resting on their laurels and are again expanding the service.....

Let's hope for a subscription MOVIE service!

Err...you mean like Netflix?
 
I'm interested to see where this is going. I'm a diehard Pandora fan, so Apple's going to have to produce something amazing to get me away from there.
 
And still I don't care. 1.29 a song or 9.99 an album is no skin off my nose. If you have access to that much music, you won't have the same appreciation for the songs. I also like to physically own things (or digitally in this case.) Would you rent CDs and give them back? No.
 
I just want to know what is going to happen to Lala's CD trading service.
Looks like that is discontinued. They are sending people to swaptree.com/lala.

That is what got me to use it a few years ago. Send Lala a CD to earn a credit for a CD and pay $1 shipping. Found some really hard to get stuff for only $1 instead of going to ebay/amazon and paying $25+.
 
I personally am not convinced about music subscription. I have never used one but I must confess that it doesn't attract me.

Why I do like movie subscriptions is that movie watching for me is much more a planned event. Music I listen to in odd moments and when the desire hits me.
 
I'm sorry, I'm sure that this is not what most people want to hear and I know the possibility of this happening is 98.9 percent non-existant, but I hope that Apple doesn't change Anything, ANYTHING about Lala. It's already gold as it is and I'm afraid that if Apple does anything with it it will just crash and burn in their face. I use Lala everyday, I don't want it to change and the only thing that is remotely close to Lala is Blip.fm.
 
The Newton's only failure was being ahead of it's time.


The time gap between Cube and the Mini negates any sort 'evolution' IMO and the two machines are in completely separate markets. The Cube was supposed to be a higher end 'Ha-ha, I've got money' showcase type machine and cost nearly $2k when it first came out. The Mini, on the other hand, is more like the econo-Mac.


Lethal

Macs cost a lot more when the cube came out. At the time you could not buy an iMac with a G4 processor, so if you wanted a G4 mac the cube was the budget model compared to the G4 tower. For $800 less you got a G4 mac that didn't have as much expansion capability as a tower. This is similar to current differences between the mac mini and the mac pro.
 
And still I don't care. 1.29 a song or 9.99 an album is no skin off my nose. If you have access to that much music, you won't have the same appreciation for the songs. I also like to physically own things (or digitally in this case.) Would you rent CDs and give them back? No.

Any time a new format comes out for music distribution there are going to be people who prefer the old method. I'm sure there were folks who were upset when the 8-track was replaced with cassette tapes too.
 
At this point in time it is clear that we don't buy recorded music, but just the physical supports where the music is stored (or the ability to store it in our own devices) along with the right to listen to it. To actually own recorded music means to own the IP of that music (and this is, in some cases, oh-so-expensive). So, what's wrong with just buying the right to listen to recorded music and skip the part of buying physical supports (or the ability to record it in our own devices)?

Great move Apple, looking forward to integrate music streaming in my iPhone (multitasking included).

I agree, think of all of the people who have purchased hard drives to store all of the music they own. Millions of copies of thousands of songs being stored over and over again on different hard drives. We are accustomed to shared storage of youtube videos. Youtube keeps a few copies of each video and we stream them as needed. I can certainly imagine music going the same way.
 
I’ve never understood this argument. Wouldn’t you rather pay $180 per year to have unlimited access to the iTunes Store via streaming and timed downloads? Instead of $1.29 per song?

No, I wouldn't. I want control over my music and I don't want it to belong to some other agent.

This deal shows exactly what is wrong with depending on cloud-based content. When the company that owns that content goes bust or is sold, suddenly the deal you have for data access goes up in smoke.
 
I love Lala. It is a great place to experiment and listen to full songs. I hope Apple doesn't do much with it. We'll see I guess.
 
is this why they wanted that large server farm thing out in texas or were ever it was. I see no issues at all with this just adds more music to the libary. Shame i live in the uk. yes we have lastfm but pandora and this lala service seem to offer more options. Of course we have to wait for the legal issues to be resolved so the rest of the world can use this service
 
You know what's wrong with these online services? Lossy codecs. Most of them are 128k MP3. They ought to be shot for pushing such junk. If they were selling 24/192k tracks downconverted direct from the 8-bit DSD master I'd be buying. I don't need Red Book compatible tracks on a download, and I can always downconvert to 16/44k any time I need to.
 
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