Lala the music streaming service that was acquired by Apple has just announced via their site that they will be shut down on May 31st 2010. Apple will not be accepting new users, and existing users will be able to log in only until the end of next month.
Does this mean that we will soon be seeing iTunes in the cloud?
I’m pretty sure we will be seeing a new iTunes.com by the end of June.
Big numbers fly back and forth in one of WMG’s recent SEC filings – they took a bath on the quick turnaround deal they did buying Lala and selling it again almost immediately to Apple. They will obviously have taken advantage of their brief ownership to Ctrl + C the technology involved in Lala’s service, so keep your eyes peeled for a proprietary store in the near future. Hopefully for them, the value they managed to take out of the company was equal to the $11 million difference between what they bought it for, and the $9 million they sold it to Apple for. The accounts department can’t be too unhappy at the moment, as they’ve signed cheques to the directors for nearly double their 2007 income – $14 million in various different forms, salary, bonuses etc.
Apple confirmed on Friday that it has bought music streaming/download service Lala – the same that recently signed deals with Facebook and Google provide a music streaming through their platforms. Lala currently has 100,000 users signed up, and revenues of about $10,000,000 – their catalogue of available tracks is around 8 million, while iTunes has 11 million. The purchase is clearly not a question of expanding iTunes catalogue or user base by wooing Lala users, so iTunes can only really be interested in Lala’s streaming technology. This purchase would seem to herald iTunes launching a music streaming service to compete more directly with up and coming providers like MOG and Spotify. Dark clouds on the horizon as the download giant looms over the intended territory of new streaming propositions.
Lala have launched a new iPhone applications in which seems very cool. Take a look at the app coming to an iPhone near you very soon!
