Tag Archives | Lala

Over at CNet, Greg Sandoval’s inside sources say Apple’s setting low expectations for cloud music, and hasn’t yet acquired licenses to stream songs from its own servers.

In other words, the assumption that Apple acquired Lala to build its own streaming music service won’t pan out anytime soon. The Lala crew may actually be working on some sort of streaming video service instead, Sandoval’s sources say. Apple acquired Lala in December 2009, and shut it down in late May.

We’ve written about Lala quite a few times, because it took such a unique approach to digital music. In addition to selling MP3s, Lala sold streaming tracks for 10 cents each, and let you listen to any song once for free. It could also scan your entire downloaded music library and store a cloud version to be accessed anywhere. For Apple to offer any of those services, it needs more licensing from the music industry, and Apple reportedly hasn’t negotiated for that yet.

But as I look at the digital music landscape now, I don’t think Lala is really necessary. All-you-can-eat music services have emerged from Rhapsody, MOG and now Rdio, all of them offering mobile and desktop access for $10 per month, with the ability to download songs locally. That’s a lot more convenient than building a streaming library of individual tracks, and could be more economical for music junkies. If you just want to hear a song once for free, you can accomplish that with music search tools from Google and Bing.

As for the digital locker concept, how essential is it? Music doesn’t take up a lot of room, and storage capacity on mobile devices is only increasing. I’d rather see Apple focus on streaming video, because movies and TV shows are much more unwieldy to store and transfer. Although I was sad to see Lala go, I’m not desperate for it to come back.

Sad but in no way surprising: Apple is shutting down Lala, the excellent music service it bought last December. Lala has already stopped accepting new members; existing customers have access until the end of next month.

Unfortunately, Apple is continuing a long tradition of shuttered online services leaving customers who “bought” stuff at least partially in the lurch. It’s telling people who bought streaming Web songs that they’ll get an iTunes Store credit for the amount they spent “in appreciation of [their] support.”  But there’s no equivalent at the iTunes Store for Web songs, which played only online but only cost a dime apiece, so the credit is more akin to a discount. I hope nobody blew too much money on Web songs thinking that he or she was assembling a music collection of any permanence.

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Rumor on the Internet today has it that Apple is in “advanced ” talks to buy one of my favorite music services, Lala. Even if the conversation is real, it doesn’t mean it’ll amount to anything. But anyone who’s ever used Lala can grasp why Steve Jobs & Co. might be tempted to make it their own.

The company has an oddball history that includes a period as a CD-swapping service and a foray into radio, but for over a year, it’s focused on pretty much being what iTunes might be if it were an entirely Web-based service. You can buy streaming-only songs for a dime apiece, but the first listen to any song is free. Like the late, lamented original MP3.com, Lala replicates your music collection on its servers so you can listen to it anywhere–but Lala does so much more easily…and it does so legally. It wraps everything up in a user interface that looks like iTunes’ browser-based twin brother, and adds hooks to services such as Facebook and Google.

After much delay, the company recently finished work on a new product that would make its ties to Apple even closer: an iPhone app that brings most of the Web-based service to Apple’s smartphone. Lala has submitted it to Apple but it’s not yet approved for App Store distribution. However, it gave me a prerelease copy for review, and it’s as spectacular as the Web version–all of a sudden, the iPhone’s relatively skimpy memory isn’t nearly as much of an issue, since you can stream all the music you’ve got in iTunes on a PC or Mac to your phone. You can also listen to and buy songs from Lala’s 8-million song store. It’s all surprisingly fast for a streaming service, and it even caches recent music you’ve listened to so you’re not completely out of luck if you don’t have an Internet connection.

I’m fond of multiple iPhone music apps (Slacker is one favorite), but Lala is the most interesting one to date.

So why, specifically, might Apple want to snag Lala? Cnet’s Greg Sandoval gives two reasons: Lala founder Bill Nguyen is a smart entrepreneur (true) and Lala’s billing system might save Apple a ton of cash (possibly true, but profoundly tedious). I’d love to think that Apple might merge all of Lala’s goodness into iTunes itself, creating a seamless experience across Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPod. But I’m also concerned that if the service itself isn’t what has Apple excited, it might just go away. (It may be the first iPhone music app that’s good enough that it could cut into sales of songs on iTunes.)

After the jump, some screen shots of Lala for iPhone in action. One way or another, I hope you get to try it soon…

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