Apple-Owned Lala Media Shuts Down on Schedule

[fifthworld]

I can see where the recording industry would embrace this concept, because it gives CONTROL back to them again. (If the listening public gets used to the idea that the content is merely "streamed" down to them, on-demand, from a central location, that means the industry only has to control that central location. The idea of music "piracy" diminishes - because people stop being concerned with possessing copies of music on physical media.

However, this also means the listening experience is only as good as the data connection. If you're driving around in your car or you're in a remote location on a camping/hiking trip, are you sure you'll have easy access to sufficient bandwidth? How about for movies too, once the "cloud" model is in full swing?

Personally, I don't see the "cloud" as ever doing more than complimenting a PRIMARY model of local storage. It will provide added convenience and an alternate way to get content -- but people will see too many advantages in having locally stored music libraries to be comfortable SWITCHING to it, in entirety. After all, you gotta store it SOMEWHERE, and storage costs keep on dropping. (Look how cheap 1TB hard drives are these days!)

But I'm looking forward not to need to store and make back up copies of the music I purchase and not to manage hard drives. Actually I'm looking forward to stop buying music, and sometime the same music, stored in different media. First was the vinyl, than tapes, than CD, than downloaded files on my devices. I will go even one step further and be happy just paying to listen to streamed music of my choice instead of "owning" it.

 

[theGAPkid]

With 'The Cloud' market set to grow 3-fold over the next year, then I think Apple is making the right moves. A company so involved in 'all-things-tech' would be foolish not to "jump on the bandwagon" and offer at least some cloud based functionality.

 

[onigami]

Anyone else suspect these buyouts are basically because the recording industry earns very little money out of what was essentially free streaming? I doubt LaLa would have caught "Apple's" attention were it not for the streaming (I say that because the industry is prolly all but ordering Apple to buy it out using their leverage)

 

[milkyboy]

Spotify

I never used Lala, so I've might gotten a few facts wrong. But, if I've understood it correctly, it was a web based service where you payed 10 cents per song, and then streamed it from their servers. If Apple bought it from 17 to 80 million dollars, I'm sure they have some other plans than throwing those money away.

I tried searching the thread, but couldn't find any posts on Spotify. Spotify is basically the same as Lala, a service where you stream music from a cloud. It is up to the user to decide, if he/she wants to pay for the service (about 13 dollars per month) or have the occasional commercial break. To answer all those people who speak so strongly against cloud-based music because of whatever downtime or offline problems they may cause, I can tell you that Spotify has developed an offline mode where it allows you to download the music to your computer or cell phone. Never tried the offline mode, but those friends I have who uses it says it works superb. For those who miss, Lala, try it out!

 

[thomaus]

How long would it take to upload an entire library? I think I'm hovering around 50 GB, and there are plenty of people with lots more than that. That's going to be one LONG process.

Good point.

I have about 250 Gb of music on my Mini music server, and just to update the Genius database is a chore. Usually takes three to four tries to get the data out and back because it keeps timing out.

I would presume that the service would only upload 128 kbps AAC down-sampled files, so my library full of Apple Lossless files would shrink dramatically. It still would be dozens of gigs. And my cable ISP would be happy because the mass upload would put us over the monthly allotment, and cause extra charges.

A better idea would be just to trust that whatever is in my Genius database is something I've properly licensed, so it would just link my titles to the same songs in 'The Cloud". Honest, they're all bought and paid for...

 

[thomaus]

the problem is, of course, that lala.com had it exactly right, and there was no use in having someone buy them from a consumer standpoint.

you could listen to (almost) any album in their catalog for free once, you could have it scan your itunes library (with audio fingerprinting) for songs that were in their library, which were then "unlocked" for your account, giving you unlimited playback for those.
Any songs that you had that didn't show up in their library would then be converted and uploaded to their servers, appearing alongside everything else in your online library.

Which meant that my beatles albums were on my lala account, even though the songs weren't available on lala itself. The metadata was there, though, so it showed the artwork and everything with no problem.

basically, lala was exactly what i wanted.

if i wanted to buy a song, i just paid 10 cents, with the understanding that they wouldn't be available unless i was logged in. fair trade.

You can bet all the money in the world that Apple will not be offering anything close to the terms of the lala system. They may carry most of the functionality wrt synching your library, etc, but it isn't going to be free (as lala was). It will probably be used as a sales point for freaking mobile me.

which I will never, ever buy.

If this sort of system became really popular, and was expanded to TV/Movies, you'd only need the little 8 gb iPhones or Touches, because everything would be streaming.

Thanks for the summary. It sounds like an ingenious system.

Oh, and annually paying for my mac.com email address has been a painful thing to do. I'm all for improvements to that system. But I can't defend the spotty service I had with it for years. They seem to use a special slow part of the internet to get everything back and forth.

 

[azurehi]

Here's a song for all you lala people!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcFKIckf6qw

Oh Oh...will I be able to play this youtube clip on the iPad and iPhone, neither of which I own??

 

[janstett]

"The Cloud" is really a weird expression... especially we people here in Europe don't get it... it sounds like a Steven King title and just means online!?

I think it predates teh intrawebz, I remember seeing it used in diagrams to represent distributed and/or client-server relationships and used as a black box to say "we don't know nor need to know what happens in here". It was represented on the diagram literally as a bubbly cloud.

Same here. Simplify works great. Do you think someone will update the app when OS 4 comes out and put it up on Cydia so we can get background music?

Nope, they belong to Google and rumor is their technology will become Android-only.

Not for me. I'm happy carrying all my music in my pocket, thank you.

I would be too if it could all fit. No way that's happening on a 32GB iPhone. Downsampled, I can fit it on a 240gb 5.5 gen iPod but it can't shuffle libraries that large.

I struggle to see who would want streaming, cloud-based iTunes. Storage is so cheap, why not just keep it all locally? I guess you could run out of room on your iPhone, but if that's the case, you've got a LOT of music, and I don't see apple offering 100 or even 50 gb of storage with an online service. Plus, do you really want to lose access to your music when you're away from wifi (laptop, wifi ipad, iPod touch) or out of 3g coverage?

Conversely, do you want to lose access to your music when you forgot your iPod? Or you are in the car? Or your music is on your laptop which is not with you now?

Another reason to do this is people don't back up their hard drives. Moving the library to the cloud solves this problem.

First, I guess you (and judging by the comments others have made, you aren't alone) haven't used Lala. They used your local music as a "key" to allow you to listen to it online in a version that everybody who has that song shares. So they don't give you storage and you don't upload your files there. A sizable fraction of my library's content was not available on Lala. Therefore, I have to conclude they worked with a subset of the record companies to license the music.

Since there is some ignorance (in the literal definition) on the subject, I'll talk about Simplify too. You install the server on your machine, and then you can listen to your music streamed from that machine on other machines, on phones, etc. You can even share amongst friends when your friends sign up and invite you to their libraries. Simplify was great for me (my 500gb+ of music won't fit on any iPod, so going streaming was ideal). Aside from the slow library load and access times, it was great -- until my ISP sent me a nastygram about my bandwidth.

[
I've never understood why google thinks everyone wants cloud-based everything, and I don't understand why apple is jumping on this bandwagon either. I much prefer having my data stored and secured locally. I have guaranteed access (no downtime, no lack of network connection) and no worries about who has or could get my data (this goes beyond just music). Cloud based means you can access it from anywhere, but so what. Do I really need access to my iTunes from computers other than the ones I own?

My guesses as to why it's being pushed, good or bad, from the perspective of Apple and/or Google:

- ISPs make home-based server streaming difficult and unworkable.
- Accessing content via the web probably offers ad eyeballs = revenue
- Much like last.fm, etc., lets them know exactly what you're listening to
- Gives them the power to remove/censor/restrict the content.

Why a user would find it useful:
- Access to media from anywhere
- No worries about losing physical media or files
- Get around the small physical storage in flash-based mobile devices.

Actually, the technology I was hoping for was basically turning iTunes on the mac or PC into a streaming server, so that you are your own "cloud" - still in control of your own music/videos/etc. and hosting to your own enabled devices. Basically, what you can already do over the LAN from computer to computer, but over the internet to iDevices as well.

But it'll never happen. No way in hell apple will get away with pissing off the music labels AND the ISPs with the added upload bandwidth. But I can always hope.

That's what Simplify was. (And my ISP did complain about the added bandwidth when I used it full time to my iPhone in my car).