Wow I gotta say that I can't believe how important people's "tunes" are. People pay money for this service?? You know you're getting old when....
Rich
Rich
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Acquires Streaming Music Service Lala Media
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'd rather host my own iTunes music and stream it anywhere like using a Synology DS109/209, etc and the iPhone app DSAudio. It sits on my broadband connection, exposed to the outside world which I can listen to anytime anywhere. I fail to see how paying a subscription for each listen is better than that.
TV They can still save the
TV but right now I wouldn't buy one and I believe there are better alternatives.Lala would certainly be coming to the
TV, but even that's not enough to save it.
You obviously don't use Lala. This has nothing to do with either of those things. Lala is, very specifically, a music service.
I love Lala. I hope Apple makes it even better. Now let's get that iPhone app approved.
And Lala is nothing like Pandora other than the fact that they both are about music.
Pandora = Radio
Lala = Your Library in the cloud
You might as well get over that. It’s just a matter of time before Apple shuts down lala.com and redirects it to iTunes. They didn’t purchase LaLa to keep it open. They want their engineering talent and IP.
It already does belong to another agent. You didn’t purchase the actual music. You purchased a license to listen to the music on a specific medium.
So what’s the difference in purchasing music from iTunes (pre-DRM free) or movies or TV shows than a streaming/subscription service? Apple could go out of business any moment and without their DRM servers you can’t access your content.
At least with a streaming/subscription service, you could just pick up with another service. The same can’t be said for purchased media from iTunes. If Apple was to fail or shut down their DRM servers, you would be screwed.
The more options iTunes has for delivering content, the better off customers are.
When's the last time you purchased a CD with terms like these:
"la la may at any time lose the right to make certain eMasters or Web Songs available. In such event, you will no longer be able to stream those eMasters or Web Songs."
From here:
http://www.lala.com/#termsofservice
For stuff I don't want to listen to in 1 year, lala.com is great. For anything I want to listen to later, I prefer the actual track/CD but maybe that's just me...
We'll see exactly what happens to those $.10 tracks now that Apple bought them... I can't say but it's not out of the question that you'll be denied access to those, or asked to pay x$ to "upgrade" to a full iTunes DL'd track. But that's up to Apple/lala/lawyers/the labels...
There is an invention called "radio" that does the same thing free of charge. And it's even completely legal all over the world to record music from it.
Now why again should somebody pay to -rent- music? It's like paying for hot air in cans.
Apple and Amazon are roughly the same price now, although some individual songs may vary.
Now, if you're comparing to something like the Zune pass (that a friend of mine raves about) you may be onto something.
95% of my music, in addition to being on my computer/iPods, I bought on CD. (Not counting my record collection of course.) So I will pay $0/year for the rest of my life to listen to it. That is ownership. A one-time investment, not paying again and again for the same content. The same with the 5% I bought online.
I won't be able to listen to music that's on my iPod? How does that work?
In any case, $180/year is more than I spend on music. If I hear a new song I like then I buy it, and it doesn't add up to that much. (And don't think the $180/year would remain constant, either; in 20 years it might be two, three, or five times that much.) The counter argument is that there's a wider selection, but whatever I want to hear I buy, and my selection is already so wide that I can barely listen to it all in a year anyway.
This is what I'm afraid will happen. Apple did not purchase Lala to construct a better listening experience for customers. They purchased as a tool to make money. This is just another way they can direct potential customers to iTunes.
That said, if an off-shoot of this is that I can stream music natively (that is, as a background process) on my iPhone, I will be happy. If someone says that this is a "better listening experiece" provided via the Lala acquisition, I remind them that it has been entirely in Apple's power to provide background streaming for some time now.
This acquisition makes me wonder if Apple ever tried to purchase Pandora (yes, I know they are different)?
Interesting...
I have Click2Flash installed & the link won't play in Safari (you don't get a gray box with the option to load Flash).
Likely, Apple will rework the site to use HTML5 and Quicktime.
As others have posted, I suspect this service will be expanded to include all kinds of digital content.
*
I used to think in the same way, but during the years I ended up several time re-purchasing the same content, either because of the promised quality of a new recording media/technology or for convenience. Starting with vinyl, then tapes, then CDs, than re-mastered CDs, then SuperAudio CDs, and sometime vinyl again.
The problem is we never buy the content, just the right to listen to it as stored in a specific physical media (this includes our devices when we purchase from iTunes or similar).
If one day I will have the ability to stream the music of my choice (unlike the radio or pandora) in a reasonable hi-quality format (mp3 or aac aren't good enough), I will certainly give up buying music stored in a physical media. I'm confident that with a subscription model, or even with a pay-per-listen one, I will save money.
I respect that you have a different perspective, and I don't see a problem in having different ones; however, I see many signals out there (including the one in this very news) telling that the music industry/distribution will largely change their business model in the few years to come.
This is for the next iPhone/iPod
The next iPhone tag line.
iPhone: ∞ songs in your pocket.
(we've come a long way since 1,000. . .)
The next iPhone tag line.
iPhone: ∞ songs in your pocket.
(we've come a long way since 1,000. . .)
I have bought some of the same music on both vinyl and CD, but that's it. It hasn't amounted to a large dollar amount.
Whether it's buying the "content," or a physical media containing the content, is splitting hairs to me. If I buy something, I possess it, I do what I want with it, I own it.
I have no doubt that's true. Industries are always changing their production and distribution models, and the music industry is especially challenged. But music subscription services are not for me.
The service is already gold. I don't necessarily want Apple messing with the service either. If they make it better I don't mind, but how would they make it better?
Just because you buy a few albums a month you appreciate the music less?
I'd love an iTunes subscription model, myself.Maybe it's gold to you but it wasn't to Lala. Apparently they could even turn a profit. They came to Apple for this deal.
I know, but we can do what we want only regarding our listening to music. We can't, for example, use the music in a movie, or make it available p2p. To actually own the music we need to buy or license the IP of it (or if it is public domain than nobody can own it).
Just to stay in Apple realm look at some of the recent litigations: Apple vs. Psystar, Nokia vs. Apple, Opti Inc. vs. Apple, Apple vs. Media Solutions Holdings , Eminem vs. Apple, and clearly we can see signs of a confusing economical/cultural change, where IP is more and more vested with value. IMO the confusion arise because today information is basically available to every one.
Well if you're not an iTunes user, it's a different story. You might just be out of luck, or it might bring you back to iTunes.
Well of course you can't make other uses of the music, no one is arguing that, and that's beside the point. The point is to own a physical copy of the music so that a) you aren't being charged repeatedly for listening to the same music, and b) your ability to access it for listening purposes isn't somehow lost (as current Lala users must be wondering about now).