Apple To Shut Down Lala On May 31

dirk and a large number of other distressed readers let us know that Apple is shuttering Lala, the music service they bought last December, on May 31. "Apple will transfer any remaining money in a user's account to iTunes, and will credit users (via iTunes) for any web songs that were purchased. It's a real shame, as Lala was a much better music service, offering songs in straight MP3 format. Its web service was innovative and ahead of its time. And it was one of the few places that would let you listen to an entire song to sample it (after one complete listen, you then could only hear a 30-second sample)." Reader Dhandforth adds: "10-cent favorites will now cost 9.9x more. What's worse, a community of music fans (followers and followees) will disappear on May 31. Evil. Sigh."

Comments

Re:And what if...

[furball]

A request for a refund check to Lala must be made prior to May 31, 2010 for a refund.

Re:Why does anyone use iTunes?

[Reverberant]

Apart from the 'cool' factor, why do people use Apple's locked down crap?

Apple hasn't sold DRMd music for a couple of years now.

Video through iTunes is still DRMd, but so is Amazon video.

Re:You should get a refund

[pdabbadabba]

Apparently you can get a check if you request it by May 31.

Re:No duh?

[Attila Dimedici]

Makes you wonder why they purchased it in the first place...

To eliminate some of the competition. Anybody with any sense knew that when they bought them. They only kept them running this long for two reasons. One, to try and migrate some of the users to Itunes. Two, to see if there was anything that Lala did that they wanted to implement in Itunes.