Apple Buys Lala Music Streaming, But Why?

Apple has snapped up music streaming biz Lala in what many initially thought to be a move to step beyond the strict download market of iTunes. On closer inspection it seems that Lala was a somewhat less-than-ideal target and Apple may just be gunning for ready-made engineering talent. "On balance, the purchase appears to give Apple the chance to bring in engineers that will be useful now, and could be even more so if it chooses to enter streaming or subscription services. But, for the moment, there's nothing about the purchase that seems to provide the company with any key technologies it was missing in terms of diving into markets. Until another company demonstrates that there's money to be made (or iPods to be sold) through streaming, there's no reason to think that a move of this sort is imminent."

Comments

Article summary appears to have it backwards

[znu]

The initial NYT article about the acquisition said it was only talent related, while a more recent Reuters article has the following quote:

A source familiar with the matter said the iPod, iPhone and Mac maker is seeking new ways to expand iTunes to move it beyond being a predominantly download service for songs. The source asked not to be named.

"Apple recognizes that the model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level," said the person.

The truth is, nobody really knows what Apple is up to. Which is, of course, just how Apple likes it. I wouldn't put it past them to have deliberately leaked a couple of conflicting stories just to keep everyone guessing.

Re:One Word

[Enderandrew]

What if they want to just use Lala as a gateway for directing people to buy music off iTunes?

People search for music. They get the Lala sample, and then iTunes swoops in for the sale.

Seems very logical to me.

Imma-what?

[Yamata no Orochi]

Immanent...I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Hopeful for some personal gain

[teh_commodore]

As a Mac owner and iPod/iTunes user AND a [the only?] paying LaLa customer, I'd be absolutely thrilled if this led to tighter integration between the two products.

Right now, I have iTunes that I use to update my iPod and LaLa which I primarily use to listen to music when I'm on ANY web connected computer. I use LaLa over iTunes at home because I have streams for some songs that I have a paid license to listen to on LaLa that I didn't pay the extra 79 cents to download, so they aren't available in my iTunes.

With LaLa, if I have an internet connection, I can listen to my songs and streams from anywhere, which means I don't need copies of all of my MP3s (or whatever) on my laptop, my work machine, my home machine, etc. It's amazing, and stream licenses are only 10 cents per song.

LaLa also provides a music mover app, which watches my iTunes directory and automatically unlocks the streams in LaLa of the tracks of whatever CD I just imported on iTunes.

Suffice it to say, I love it, and if they integrated the two products, I'd love it even more.

Re:Google

[hansamurai]

“parent directory” mp3 OR wma OR ogg OR wav Band/Singer -html -htm -download -links