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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."
...I know people who did, and none of them are happy about this. I've herad nothing but good things about Lala, it's a shame that it will be going away :/
Living With a Nerd
Because anyone actually thought that Apple was going to keep running two competing music stores?
Steve jobs sticks his fingers in his ears.. "LALALALALALALALALALA"
There was a bit of a storm forming as it started and the wind picked up when Steve Jobs took the stage. The CEO of Lala looked very nervous. Heat lightning started arcing through the clouds as Steve finished his speech. Then he gestured to the Lala CEO who obediently got down on his knees. Steve drew a giant claymore from behind the podium and said very loudly as the storm climaxed, "There can be only one." And lopped off the head of Lala's CEO. Steve stood there shaking with ferver and excitement as user after user account was transferred to iTunes Music Service, rendering him many millions more in revenue. While particularly gruesome, heartless and violent to the eyes of women and children in the crowd, in the business world it's a perfectly natural cycle.
My work here is dung.
A request for a refund check to Lala must be made prior to May 31, 2010 for a refund.
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
You should get a refund of your money, not have it be transferred to iTunes.
What you agreed to pay for was Lala's service, not iTunes'.
Apple has always been more innovative than Microsoft. Their desktop OS has been years ahead of Windows for most of the past decade, and now their malicious business approach is beginning to surpass that of Microsoft's.
Mod parent up.
This is getting out of hand.
Apple said they were most interested in Lala's billing software.
-l
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If I have a car company, and I buy your smaller car company, I can merge your product into mine and remove the competition, thereby increasing my profits.
Sent from your iPad.
Can slashdot
a) create a Steve job version of the Bill Gates borg icon.
b) change the MS icon Ms instead of the Bill Gates borg icon.
I just think it's time.
use rhapsody - as much music as you like for $10 / month. Now works on iphone and ipod
Yes, you are missing something. When you purchase a company, you get the assets, their Intellectual property (IP), employees (they can of course quit later), customers, etc. Apple can go and make ITunes better by using the IP they just acquired, or they can get the employees because they need more to work on their stuff and they like what LaLa did, they can continue to run 2 music stores and get the profit from both, or they can trash the one they bought and have a new customer base (customers are of course free to jump ship. Apple didn't seem interested in the tech, just the customer database. They have a bunch of new customers who had account credit with LaLa that is now ITunes credit. Some of the customers will request refunds, or spend it and jump ship, but a number of them will just accept it and start using ITunes.
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."
Evil? Evil?
You keep using that word but I don't think you know what it means.
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.
buy it while you can afford to, and then dismantle it..
Lala was a much better music service, offering songs in straight MP3 format.
If the format is your sole criteria, then you have made a grave mistake. If you meant DRM-free, then you should have said that, but all of the formats Apple offers through iTunes are technically superior to mp3. And the DRM is not tied to the format, meaning, I use the formats Apple uses, but I don't use DRM. And my music library just sounds better than your mp3 library.
The real reason it's bad that Lala is going away is that variety and competition is good, less variety and competition is not as good.
The Admin and the Engineer
> Lala was a much better music service, offering songs in straight MP3 format
Are you calling AAC homosexual?
Or maybe it's just that their business model didn't work.
Bizarre that Apple would front cash money for a failing operation. It would probably have been a bit smarter to simply let them fall flat on their face instead of spending so much cash, right?
Everyone's favorite companies are those that are giving free services and running at a loss, and then they complain when they turn to advertising, subscriptions, or just go belly up. iTunes is a sustainable business model, and Lala is not. Deal with it.
What the hell are you talking about? On Lala, you could pay 10 cents per song to stream it as much as you want, or $.99-1.29 to own it outright. And that was not sustainable? They simply offered more options than Apple, they didn't give songs away. Where are you getting your information ... ?
My work here is dung.
Yeah, I lost my hair too.
The whole reason I was using Lala was because my computers (Linux) don't seem to work with iTunes.
Replacing my purchased web songs with an iTunes credit that I can't use doesn't really help me out.
(Interview with Notorious Lawyer Jacques Vergès).
'There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Evil'
He has met Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Che Guevara. He defended 'Carlos the Jackal' and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Jacques Vergès, 83, is probably the world's most notorious attorney. His latest client is Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, who is on trial for war crimes.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Vergès, are you attracted to evil?
Jacques Vergès: Nature is wild, unpredictable and senselessly gruesome. What distinguishes human beings from animals is the ability to speak on behalf of evil. Crime is a symbol of our freedom.
SPIEGEL: That's a cynical worldview.
Vergès: A realistic one.
SPIEGEL: You have defended some of the worst mass murderers in recent history, and you have been called the "devil's advocate." Why do you feel so drawn to clients like Carlos and Klaus Barbie?
Vergès: I believe that everyone, no matter what he may have done, has the right to a fair trial. The public is always quick to assign the label of "monster." But monsters do not exist, just as there is no such thing as absolute evil. My clients are human beings, people with two eyes, two hands, a gender and emotions. That's what makes them so sinister.
SPIEGEL: What do you mean?
Vergès: What was so shocking about Hitler the "monster" was that he loved his dog so much and kissed the hands of his secretaries -- as we know from the literature of the Third Reich and the film "Der Untergang" ("Downfall"). The interesting thing about my clients is discovering what brings them to do these horrific things. My ambition is to illuminate the path that led them to commit these acts. A good trial is like a Shakespeare play, a work of art.
SPIEGEL: Are there any people whose defense you would not take on out of principle?
Vergès: One of my principles is to have no principles. That's why I would not turn down anyone.
SPIEGEL: Let's say, Adolf Hitler...
Vergès: I would have defended Hitler. I would also accept Osama bin Laden as a client, even (US President) George W. Bush -- as long as he pleads guilty.
SPIEGEL: You can't seriously be mentioning Hitler, Bin Laden and Bush, and their failings, in the same breath.
Vergès: Every crime is unique, and so is every criminal. That alone makes such comparisons impossible.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
It's the absolute worse bloat/security nightmare.
but for all practical purposes is useless outside of the iTMS walled garden.
What are you talking about? How is it useless? It plays on pretty much every modern software and hardware music player made. It plays on the frickin' Zune. Zen, Archos, Sansa, Sony, even the PSP. Songbird, Mplayer, WMP, and everything else I can think of.
Seriously, back in the day before anyone but Apple used it, it was a valid argument to say you wanted to use the more compatible .mp3 instead of the more efficient .mp4, but now I wonder what you're using that it isn't compatible with.
Now I might be missing something, but what did they gain through this acquisition?
Probably some slick little bit of code that Lala used in their streaming severs. $80 million is chump change to Apple and they no doubt did the math and figured it would cost them more to develop something similar in-house. Also, no worries about software patent lawsuits this way.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Apple is preparing for Steve's departure. by consolidating their IP and becoming draconian in it's fenced garden. This is very simial to the last time steve started preparing to leave.
I honestly don't see apple surviving long without him at the helm.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As long as its not a monopoly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it is that people will never learn from history. During the good old days, the Apple II came out and revolutionized the industry. Their systems supported a a community of enthusiasts who build great software, and ushered in the revolution. Then they became arrogant. They developed the Macintosh. It was now my way or the high way. You could no longer build / buy expansion cards. People moved over to the IBM PC, which all though it was ugly, did not force you to be what apple wanted you to be.
For a long while after this apple sucked. Mr. jobs was forced out. Then the competition became arrogant and bloated. Mr. Jobs came back, OSX was introduced, and Apple no longer sucked.
Now I am happy to say the tide is once again changing. ITunes used to be a good music player. Now it is a combination Music player, Video play, video game player, shopping store, all wrapped in one file that take up 900 GB of space. Apple is forcing you to program the way they want you to program (witness flash). They are shutting down sites that are better at music then they are. Hence the cycle is complete. It is only a matter or time before someone new (or old comes back into the game).
This cycle corresponds to the cyclical nature of world powers. Once upon a time. China, and Europe with all those kings, emporers, and endless wars sucked. The cool people left and came to the USA, or were kicked out and went to jail. The USA was so great, that we kicked everyones butt. Then we too became arrogant, and allowed to many lawyers into our country. Now China rocks, and Europe is cool. So it is all one big cycle.
-Time to sell you stock in Apple.
You agreed to buying it DRMd at the time. If you didn't like it you shouldn't have bought it.
Well......
I hear people objecting about media consolidation.[...] so they can control what gets shown or not shown on broadcast
Except the Internet is a totally different world.
Old world distribution channels are limited by the number of venues, whether those are radio stations, TV channels, concert halls, or feet of shelf space on record stores. In the old world, artists would be shut out if radio stations wouldn't play them or if Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble wouldn't put them on the shelves. Consolidation in the old world meant even fewer venues, and fewer venues meant less variety.
iTunes sells every song it can get a license to sell. There's no limit to its shelf space, or how many channels it has. New artists aren't going to be shut out of iTunes because there isn't enough room.
The only risk for consumers is that the lack of competition will drive up prices. Luckily, there are still Amazon and other online stores competing with iTunes. And really, since the RIAA cartel restricts the prices for iTunes and everyone else, that's not really an issue anyway.
Okay, so some commercial players have jumped on the bandwagon (and I doubt mplayer's codecs are technically legal), but MP3 is still more compatible and more common. How about car stereos--do CDs full of AAC files work as well as CDs full of MP3s?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish
This gets +5 insightful?
EEE does not mean "buy out your competition." EEE means "subvert and discredit your competition, forcing them out of business."
An EEE strategy in this case would be:
1. Embrace: Announce that iTunes will become a Lala client, with full support for all Lala features
2. Extend: Offer new, proprietary features through iTunes that are not available through the regular Lala website, fostering dependence on iTunes as a Lala client
3. Extinguish: Remove support for Lala from iTunes, leaving all Lala users dependent on iTunes
In an EEE strategy, Lala would not have gotten a dime from Apple. Apple did not EEE Lala, Lala sold out to the man, plain and simple.
If only I could get a refund for my hundreds of web songs :(
Serves you right for paying for a license to listen to music instead of a downloaded file that you keep.
Anyone know of a service that sells downloadable, DRM-free music that you can copy to unlimited computers, burn to CD, back up, and maybe use with iPods?
I think the Amazon music store can do that. I wonder if there are any others....
Yeah, ok. I'll see your cross-platform MP3 virus with an attack vector that only works when copying files from a Windows machine, and raise you an FSM, two pink unicorns, and a hot chick married to an old man for love.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The Creative MuVo in my pocket comes to mind. Bought that 2 years ago, works great, it's cheap, has a decent mic for voice notes and a user-replacable battery... It even pops apart for use as a usb stick with it's own little connector built right in. It's a nice little piece of tech.
Now I'm wondering why I now have to replace it by Apple fiat.
Moreover, I wonder why you're so hard to bring people into technology you've chosen as right for *you*. People are well within reason to complain. As technology expands, it can open up *more* options while retaining compatibility with what's been established to work in the past. Apple uses technology to constrain options. That's the crux of it.
Still not a good reason to kill off MP3. It's still ubiquitous. It's what all *my* music is in. I want to listen to it on *my* stuff, see?
Is that so unreasonable?
Of course, I had to google that. Here's the full interview:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,591943,00.html
An extraordinarily interesting interview, to say the least. Well worth a full read.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Okay, so some commercial players have jumped on the bandwagon (and I doubt mplayer's codecs are technically legal), but MP3 is still more compatible and more common.
And CDDA is more compatible and common yet. What's your point? My car stero plays CDDA exclusively, does that mean companies have a responsibility to sell CDDA forever, or can they drop that line and move to more advanced forms of audio? I have a friend with an 8-track player... you guys should get together and commiserate.
They wanted DRM free from the start - it was a stated goal of Apple's that there be no DRM. Remember the "Rip, Mix, Burn" adverts? Their extension of that was to be able to buy music online as well as rip it from your CDs.
However, they had no choice - the labels had the content and would not allow it to be sold without DRM, so they had to add it. They made it as weak as they could get away with, and even included the ability to burn your tracks to Audio CD, stripping off the DRM.
In their later negotiations to remove DRM entirely, they reached a compromise with the labels that involved the introduction of tiered pricing for the removal of DRM.
Um, Jobs was the first music industry figure to call for DRM-free music. Charging 30 cents is required to pay the labels. Do you think the labels would be fine letting you redownload a DRM track DRM-free? On the other hand, what motivation does Apple have to charge you to do so? They make very little money on their Music Store. The purpose of the store is to add value to the iPod (and there's little doubt that this has worked very well for them).
My point? Just because Apple now sells DRM-free music doesn't mean Apple is anti-DRM.
Not a single person said they were. They are anti-DRM with regards to music, though.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
This was written before there were any truly above-board, major-label, DRM-free online music stores.
Not every day, but it does seem to be increasing every week, or perhaps just every month.
Consider that it may be due to changed circumstances. A few years ago when Apple acted evil, it only affected those who were committed to it...often idealistically committed. These days it is having a much bigger impact on the average user. So it's more significant when they do something evil.
If you ever though that Apple was a good company, you just weren't paying attention. This was safe, as there was a large space to go to when you didn't like something they did. If, however, you invest a lot of money in something, say a collection of LaLa music, and you are suddenly told "That music is going away, but we'll give you the cost of it as credits at our new store, where things cost 10 times as much" (I'm relying on another poster for that figure.), then it's understandable if you are less than enchanted with the company coercing you thusly. These aren't people who CHOSE to use Apple, these are people coerced into using them.
An analogous action happens whenever a company ties you into a long-term service agreement, and then raises the price a lot in the middle of the agreement. This is clearly "Bait and Switch", but the usual laws don't usually cover this technique. So the people who get shafted are unhappy with the entity applying the shaft. (N.B.: In some of these deals, the entity applying the shaft had no say in what would happen. Like the way the phone company collects taxes. There are commercial analogues to that measure, which insulate the malefactor from public anger over the results of his misdeeds.)
Apple has deserved bad press ever since the days of the Apple ][. They also generally deserve all the good press they get, and that's been continuing. (If you check, you should see that there are also more stories praising Apple ;than there were in an equivalent period a year or two ago.) But when most of the people affected by Apple's actions were committed to them, bad press wasn't interesting to anyone, and good press was mainly interested to those committed. Now there's a broader base for the stories, and a lot fewer of them are willing to uncritically praise Apple.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.