Soooo sad
Lala, a cloud-based music service that I previously blogged about, was acquired by Apple last December. Today I received an email stating that Lala will be shut down as of May 31st.
Previous to the Apple acquisition, Google was extensively using Lala for their new music search feature. The folks at Apple saw the potential for this to take a chunk out of their music business, and Google and Apple both put in offers to acquire the streaming Lala service. In the end, Apple won out, and now they’ve decided to take a one-of-a-kind online music service and completely do away with it.
What, then, was Apple’s motive for the Lala acquisition? I see a couple of possibilities:
- Grabbing the company for the sole reason that Google wouldn’t be able to benefit from an acquisition or partnership. Throw a monkey wrench at Google’s music search.
- A talent acquisition. This happens a lot with smaller software companies. A big company will buy the company for the personnel, not the specific product they develop. This would coincide with the industry speculation that there is an iTunes-in-the-cloud service brewing up in Cupertino.
The consumer loses
I see the loss of Lala as a lose for the general consumer as well as the music enthusiast. Lala offered the unique notion of web songs, where the user would pay $.10 per song to add it to their cloud collection, available from that point on for unlimited listening. This was a fresh idea and lessened the friction for users to actually pay for music. Once you’re talking about (literally) dimes and nickels, the consumer can almost associate buying web songs as “free.” I saw this as a big win for the future of the music industry – getting people to pay something in exchange for on-demand listening rights.
I was a pretty avid Lala user previous to (and a bit after) the Apple acquisition, but I’m now glad that I decided to ditch Lala for MOG.com in the past few months.
iTunes in the cloud?
What about iTunes in the cloud? If TechCrunch and others are correct about an Apple cloud music offering in the near future, then great. What I’d like to see is some healthy competition in the cloud music space. There’s a wide open opportunity for a smaller company like MOG or Rhapsody to force the Apple music machine to offer the consumer an outstanding experience for music listening and discovery. Apple has dominated the music industry since the iTunes store opened, but only time will tell what their cloud offering will be, and how it will compete with current subscription services.
See Lala’s shutdown notice. Fortunately for Lala users, all web song purchases made via Lala will be refunded as credit to the iTunes store after Lala goes under. However, with iTunes downloads priced 10x higher than Lala’s web songs, it’s like offering a peso for each Lala customer’s dollar.
Apple to shut down Lala
Soooo sad
Lala, a cloud-based music service that I previously blogged about, was acquired by Apple last December. Today I received an email stating that Lala will be shut down as of May 31st.
Previous to the Apple acquisition, Google was extensively using Lala for their new music search feature. The folks at Apple saw the potential for this to take a chunk out of their music business, and Google and Apple both put in offers to acquire the streaming Lala service. In the end, Apple won out, and now they’ve decided to take a one-of-a-kind online music service and completely do away with it.
What, then, was Apple’s motive for the Lala acquisition? I see a couple of possibilities:
The consumer loses
I see the loss of Lala as a lose for the general consumer as well as the music enthusiast. Lala offered the unique notion of web songs, where the user would pay $.10 per song to add it to their cloud collection, available from that point on for unlimited listening. This was a fresh idea and lessened the friction for users to actually pay for music. Once you’re talking about (literally) dimes and nickels, the consumer can almost associate buying web songs as “free.” I saw this as a big win for the future of the music industry – getting people to pay something in exchange for on-demand listening rights.
I was a pretty avid Lala user previous to (and a bit after) the Apple acquisition, but I’m now glad that I decided to ditch Lala for MOG.com in the past few months.
iTunes in the cloud?
What about iTunes in the cloud? If TechCrunch and others are correct about an Apple cloud music offering in the near future, then great. What I’d like to see is some healthy competition in the cloud music space. There’s a wide open opportunity for a smaller company like MOG or Rhapsody to force the Apple music machine to offer the consumer an outstanding experience for music listening and discovery. Apple has dominated the music industry since the iTunes store opened, but only time will tell what their cloud offering will be, and how it will compete with current subscription services.
See Lala’s shutdown notice. Fortunately for Lala users, all web song purchases made via Lala will be refunded as credit to the iTunes store after Lala goes under. However, with iTunes downloads priced 10x higher than Lala’s web songs, it’s like offering a peso for each Lala customer’s dollar.