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Apple in talks to buy music service Lala?

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On December 4, 2009, 4:48 PM

Apple is reportedly eyeing the online music service Lala for acquisition, according to sources close to the situation. Lala lets users listen to any song on the site once free, after which customers can buy the track for $0.10. The catch is that users can only listen to the purchased songs on the Web. Tracks are stored in the "cloud" rather than being downloaded to the user's computer.

Lala offers access to some 8 million songs, including content from EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. This compares to the 11 million songs available through Apple's iTunes service, which operates in 23 countries and is claimed to be the world's largest music retailer.

Details are scant, but sources suspect that Apple may be moving toward the introduction of a subscription model. "The Lala is somewhere between the two, of permanent ownership" and a subscription model note Larry Kenswil, a former Universal Music Group exec.

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User Comments: 13

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  1. Oh no, I like lala and don't want apple to ruin it.

  2. And they definitely will muck it up with their proprietary culture.

  3. id expect the price to go from .10 cents to atleast .50 bc thats apple for ya

  4. Apple is slowly buying up all the small online music distributors. They have a ton of cash and are eating all the small fish. It's just a matter of time before they start to buy the record labels to cut out the middle man.

  5. Lala? LOL! Apple would.

  6. Apple has been growing fast in the last years, it has no rival in the MP3 players market, ipods are everywhere, and is also growing with other offerings of hardware, now it is trying to dominate the online market, that's not good at all, they need competitors to keep the prices low, if they do not have someone to compete with we will have to pay whatever they want for the songs, so that would make us chose between them or the torrents with the RIIA on our tail, haha, noting good can come from that.

  7. Apple has been growing fast in the last years, it has no rival in the MP3 players market, ipods are everywhere, and is also growing with other offerings of hardware, now it is trying to dominate the online market, that's not good at all, they need competitors to keep the prices low, if they do not have someone to compete with we will have to pay whatever they want for the songs, so that would make us chose between them or the torrents with the RIIA on our tail, haha, noting good can come from that.

  8. to late, Apple already purchased it you can see more here: [link]

  9. trainhappy said:

    to late, Apple already purchased it you can see more here: [link]

    So, there goes Lala into iTunes...

  10. wow, thats just wonderful! =/ There's gonna be a lot of changes on lala now I was just getting use to it. Though I think it a good move.

  11. I have never heard of lala in the first place.

  12. Hope they don't just shut it down. I haven't used Lala before but it could be interesting if Apple integrates a third option to purchase or subscription. Seems like it would get complicated though for users to have songs from all three.

  13. Why do they need Lala when itunes is already doing very well. Was it that hard to implement something similar into itunes? And i also don't like the idea of not being able to download what i buy from them. Without an internet connection i won't be able to listen to those songs.

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