Apple recently acquired Lala, an interesting music service that promotes the idea of streaming music. Lala lets you sample music from their catalog, and then offers the choice to download songs for $0.79 apiece or purchase the right to stream it as much as you want for ten cents. They also let you upload your music library to their servers, so your entire music library is available for you to stream online at any time.
What’s Apple going to do with their acquisition? It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to guess that.
Imagine iTunes, but with the features of Lala built in.
Another idea is that we might be seeing a browser-based version of iTunes in the future, as part of the “merge Lala into iTunes” idea. This would make is possible to listen to, and purchase, music on a computer where you can’t install iTunes.
Apple isn’t the type of company to split themselves over more than one brand, and I can’t see them shutting down Lala, so it just seems inevitable that the two services will eventually be consolidated.
