Apple Goes Lala All The Way to the Bizank

Though somewhat of an abrupt and seemingly normal announcement, Apple’s purchase of the genius online streaming service Lala will take us into the next generation of music (well the next generation of legal music) just as iTunes once did. (Note this is somewhat speculation on what Apple will do with Lala, but it’s pretty clear).

The iTunes model and software are quickly showing their age, and as Apple tends to do (iTunes was originally software from a company Apple up and bought the whole thing) they’re gearing up in advance for the next generation. By stealing the idea of some small dude who already thought of it.

For those of us in the age of Pandora..who no longer buy CDs but singles, who only use media to play our music about half the time (as opposed to streaming), this is a big announcement that I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

I first heard of LaLa just days before this announcement, and I was really interested in their model of looking at music in the cloud, and having a price structure that matches your use. What it will mean is much more music, much more options, less cost, and the bands should still be able to make some money. Far superior to filesharing (great for us, bad for bands), hard CDs, and iTunes as it exists now.

The future of music looks bright once again. Now I’m going to go download a 1.29 song that I will only listen to once.

Here’s what  Lala’s all about (from Gizmodo)

It’s three things, really: A CD trading site (its original emphasis), a streaming site, where you can “upload” your own music and stream it anywhere (your collection is matched with what Lala’s got, and anything they don’t have is actually uploaded); and a streaming site that’ll let you stream a song once for free, or pay 10 cents to stream it an unlimited number of times. In other words, It’s a music service that’s all about streaming and the cloud, both for the music you already own, and for finding and playing new music.