Apple shuts Lala, leaving questions
Written on June 2, 2010
"Is that all there is?" may be the musical question running through Lala users minds Tuesday morning on the day after Apple Inc. shut down the music service.
There was much speculation about what Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) would do with the Palo Alto-based music service when it acquired it in December.
But as of Tuesday morning Apple has revealed nothing other than the shutdown of the service, although more could be learned Tuesday night when CEO Steve Jobs participates in the All Things Digital conference or next week at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference.
Lala let users listen to any song once without paying and pay 10 cents to be able to stream the music online, or 89 cents for most songs that can be played on a portable music player payday advance.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) had included Lala streams in its service, linking to the service when searchers looked for songs or recording artists.
Some speculated that Apple could be planning a cloud-based version of iTunes, giving users a less expensive way to listen to music without downloading it to their devices.
Filed in: marketing.