According to the New York Times and others, Apple agreed yesterday to purchase a four year old music company Lala.
The company is based in Palo Alto, California, not that far from Apple own base.
Lala lets users play the music they own from the Web and even stream music they don’t own similar to Pandora.
A person’s music library would always be available on the Web and accessible on a PC, smartphone or other Web-connected mobile device. Of course Apple refused to comment on the purchase.
According to the article, “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.”
The Lala service according to music enthusiasts say is very easy to use. Lala scans the hard drives of its users and creates an online music library that matches the user’s collection, making it painless (and free) for people to get their music in the cloud.
Last year, it created a new model, letting customers either buy and download a song for 79 and 89 cents, or pay 10 cents for the rights to stream that song an unlimited number of times from the Web.
The article states that Apple’s purchase would eliminate the objection of customers to the idea that considers the prospect how long it will be around.
Read the New York Times article here.
