Lala going bye-bye May 31, rumors swirl [u]

With just 100,000 subscribers, the Lala wasn’t profitable. However, the company was admired for innovative, cloud-based music storage solution. That’s perhaps what Apple was after when it purchase music streaming service.

In December of last year, Apple purchased Lala, which led to a lot of speculation about why. Now, Lala.com has announced that it will be going dark on May 31, leading to a lot of speculation about what will happen next.

Thereupon, it’s been said that Apple purchased Lala in order to get an off-the-shelf music streaming service. However, a fact check revealed that the money losing company’s licensing agreements with the major music labels aren’t transferable.

Further, some have said, perhaps a bit more convincingly, that Apple bought Lala for its in-the-cloud music storage technology and patents, which will be rolled out as part of iTunes.com, an online only version of the iTunes Store that Cupertino has been publicly building and testing for some months already.

[u] All Things D adds that iTunes.com won’t be going live any time soon, according to unnamed music industry insiders. However, these sources say Apple’s planning a cloud-based “music locker,” a place where customers can store their music libraries online providing anywhere access.

via MacObserver

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• Lala may take iTunes into the cloud
• Apple has purchased Lala
• Lala + iTunes will yield Apple’s web only music service, say sources
• Both Apple and Google were after Lala
• Apple cloud music action disappointing