New York — After years of stalling efforts to offer music fans the power to “rent” music instead of buying downloads, finally Apple is joining the party. Apple, earlier this week confirmed the acquisition of popular online music service Lala into the streaming music business, adding to its arsenal the ways it could offer music to users.
The company declined to discuss plans on how it would integrate the service, neither offered any details on the price it paid to acquire Lala. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans,” an Apple spokeswoman said in an e-mail. Earlier reports said Apple had bought Lala, but neither company had confirmed the deal.
Lala makes it possible for U.S. users to listen a song once for free, as well as lets them purchase over 8 million songs for 10 cents each, for a version that can be played online continually or pay $0.79 or more for a copy that can be downloaded, and then listen to the tunes as many times as they like through a browser on their Windows PC or Mac. The first 25 songs are offered at no charge.
Lala’s downloadable “Music Mover” application also lets you transfer music from your hard drive to a Lala online locker, making the songs available for listening in other locations — say, via an iPhone, potentially. Customer can also purchase MP3s on Lala, with a large number of tracks available for 89 cents. The music is sold free-from digital rights management technology, making the tunes suitable for playing on any media player.
Apple operates a huge business selling songs through iTunes, but its media player does not currently let users stream full songs.
However, music industry analysts states the acquisition is Apple’s realization that it needed to be involved in the “cloud” computing movement, which could eventually bring major changes to the iTunes Store.
“The idea of paying 99 cents a track to fill my iPod — I do not need that anymore,” says Ted Cohen, a managing partner at TAG Strategic, a music industry consulting firm. “That era is over.”
For years, the music industry has a very sophisticated subscription services such as Rhapsody and Napster, explaining they made more sense for the consumer and better profits for the labels. But the services have yet to find sizable audiences and, in fact, are losing subscribers.
It is the locker that made Lala worthy for Apple, states Paul Resnikoff, editor of the blog Digital Music News. “This expands how Apple delivers music,” he says. “You are on a stopover in Kansas, want to tap into your music collection and listen to some songs on your iPhone, and there they are.” If you like what you hear, Apple can sell you more music on the spot.
Other services offer similar features already – most notably Rhapsody – “But maybe Apple wants to do it themselves,” says Resnikoff. “What they are doing is buying into a technology and engineering team and piecing together what the next step is.”
Lala, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., began its service in 2005 as a CD-swapping service before shifting to music streaming, now claims to have a catalog of more than 7 million songs. The company is privately funded.
Streaming music services are increasingly becoming popular. Both Facebook and Google signed deals with Lala in recently to let users stream songs.
Lala did not immediately reply to a request for comment.