iTunes on a Cloud – Apple Purchases Lala
Lala, the innovative cloud streaming music website is now officially apart of the Apple family. Prior to purchase, Lala users were able to buy music for 10 cent and access it anywhere. The fate of said music is up in the air given Apple’s purchase of the cloud music pioneer.
Noticably missing from Apple’s iTunes powerhouse was a cloud component. With much of the internet’s future banking on cloud computing, it was inevitable that Apple would jump into the arena. The deal with Lala was said to have been spearheaded by executives at Lala. Recently, Lala teamed up with Google to provide music for their music search engine. Whether or not this deal will survive is still to be seen.
According to Brad Stone of the NY Times:
One person with knowledge of the deal, but who was not authorized to discuss it, said that the negotiations originated when Lala executives concluded that their prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim and initiated discussions with Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president in charge of iTunes.
This person said Apple would primarily be buying Lala’s engineers, including its energetic co-founder Bill Nguyen, and their experience with cloud-based music services.
Congrats to the LaLa team. Apple is really doing their best to take over this space… I wonder who’s up next for the chopping bloc… er, I mean, acquisition table
I found this blog on google, because I was looking for a review of Up in the air. I think I will go and watch it with my girlfriend.