Switched On: Apple's song remains the same
By Ross Rubin 
posted December 8th 2009 5:30PM
posted December 8th 2009 5:30PM
Lala's shifting strategies through the years may have led many to think that its recent acquisition by Apple would represent radical changes to Apple's music approach. Lala lives on a Web page, streams from the cloud, and gives users, including Google search users, one full free play of any song in its library. But Lala's business model was always, at its core, more like iTunes' than any number of streaming music companies -- from the custom radio of Pandora to the subscription downloads of Rhapsody. Those services, however, have long been better at Apple at fostering music exploration when compared with iTunes' 30-second samples.
While it reversed its emphasis on physical albums versus digital singles, Lala always believed in conferring permanent ownership of music just as iTunes does. Even its idea of a websong, the 10-cent single that can only be streamed from its site, was intended to be permanent digital property, and in fact could be "upgraded" to a downloadable digital music file for the difference in price.
Lala could eventually have a strong impact on how iTunes customers discover and store music, Those familiar with Lala's history know that the company already allowed consumers with large music libraries to access to their songs from the Lala site without having to upload many of them. That would certainly be a complementary feature to add to MobileMe. And of course there was Lala's long-discussed iPhone app, designed for offering any songs consumers had stored on its service, as well as full samples of Lala's library songs over wireless connections.
But, again, this was all in the name of driving transactions, not streams. In
Lala offers Apple a ready-made, Web-based consolidation of personal libraries and sampled music. |
As Apple steps up flirtation with the cloud, though, the question, though, is whether is whether single track sales will even last for decades more. Recently, mog.com relaunched as an all-streaming service for $5 per month, a price that was used by Yahoo! Music and Napster to drive sampling. Napster even enabled limited free downloads at that price. But Mog may be the most pure Web-based music acccess company yet. Like Lala, it enables you to save songs in an online library, but doesn't even sell its own music, instead acting as an affiliate to Amazon.com.
And those kind of affiliate relationships may indeed help explain why Lala would up as part of Apple. With the PC manufacturer having such a strong presence in the smartphone market, Lala would have had to sell through iTunes on its iPhone app. Lala's technology can do a better job of leading consumers to the store, but Apple will continue to ring up the majority of the sales.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
"As Apple steps up flirtation with the cloud, though, the question, though, is whether it will music track sales will last for decades more."
who wrote this sentence? My god.
@deanm my thought exactly.
@deanm Nah - this was CLEARLY written by, um, Miss, um, Teen USA South Carolina...
@deanm WOW! Engadget Edit Fail:
As Apple steps up flirtation with the cloud, though, the question, though, is whether is whether single track sales will even last for decades more.
4:45pm CST
*grabs popcorn and hits F5
@deanm Agreed. I know it is rude to criticize a post's writing in the comments, but I couldn't make it all the way through this article as written. I sympathize if English is not your first language, but an editor should have caught most of the mistakes. Hopefully there isn't much flame regarding it, but these things do matter to readers.
@deanm My head just sploded.
@deanm lol, they even tried to fix it and got it wrong again.
"As Apple steps up flirtation with the cloud, though, the question, though, is whether is whether single track sales will even last for decades more."
@deanm chief editor who?
@deanm
How about the first sentence?
"Lala's business model of selling and hosting digital music was a complete abhorrence to an innovative music startup -- named Lala."
Wait what? Like google asks, did you mean
"Apple's business model of selling and hosting digital music was a complete abhorrence to an innovative music startup -- named Lala."
@deanm Seriously, I don't know if this went through a spell check. And I'm not just saying it to be mean; the article is literally difficult to read and understand. I'm unfamiliar with Lala's services and this article's bad grammar is not helping. At all.
@deanm I agree with all the comments above (or below, which ever way they go.) This article is poorly edited and doesn't really seem to say anything. (Or isn't very clear in what it's point is.)
@deanm This article is riddled with errors and embarrassingly bad. Yet, it remains 'featured'? :O
@deanm
Ross,
Stick to one-liners like your classless Ellen/Nook "coming out" joke.
Perhaps you should "step up flirtation" with your St. Martin's handbook, too. This article was an "abhorrence," after all.
@deanm
Ross,
Stick to one-liners, like your classless Ellen/Nook come out joke.
You might want to "step up flirtation" with your St. Martin's handbook, too. This article was an "abhorrence."
Give me my cookie.
I love Lala; I just discovered it a few weeks ago and the online streaming in pretty cool. The SQ is great, and you can keep 25 songs!
@HotDog
When I signed up, I got 100 free web songs from lala. It's a good service, and the streaming quality is good.
@HotDog And with the DownloadHelper extension for firefox you could . . . ah never mind. Those days are over.
@HotDog
Screw Lala, they only let you listen to songs once. Try Grooveshark.com instead. You can listen to all the music you want and keep hundreds of songs in playlists for free. They have nearly everything I've ever looked for. It's ad-driven but they let you pay $3/month to remove them and have an endless collection. Check it out.
@Ryan Trevisol
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am really eager to see what apple will do. But to be honest, maybe we wont see an online cloud-based itunes, maybe they are just securing copyrights and setting up the 1 full length trial of a song.
30 second samples suck!
Mog is really nice and it's pricing will make it very competitive, but Lala has the best interface by far, better social networking features, and a better selection in my experience. I hope Lala/Apple get into the subscription game sooner rather than later.
well i only use lala to buy my music online.
good prices.
good community
good sampling
it's why it's on my bookmark bar and it is what i use to get my music.
i think "abhorrence" is a very strong word to use.
Man I love living in Canada where it is not Illegal to download music for free.
The only downfall is that...it's still Canada
@NinjaMonkey
... if you download music that is commercially available for sale without paying for it, it's still stealing. No matter what country you're in.
@Jack
That's for the courts to decide. A precedent was set that downloading music / movies is not illegal. some deem it ethically wrong, however justice does not rule on right or wrong, it rules on illegal or legal. There is too much grey. Long live Canada!
Did my comment get lost in the engadget system? Move to Canada! It's not illegal to download music up here. Plus we have better woman.
@NinjaMonkey
Only a better WOMAN?
@Einlander
Yep, just the one. But she is better.
@jon for everyone.
@jon
Wow, I wonder how she feels about being the only one. /: sounds a bit troublesome.
"...explain why Lala would up as part of Apple."
What? This article needs some proofreading.
The first sentence in the 6th paragraph hurt my soul... ugh.
I'm interested in 3 things in Apple's Lala acquisition:
1. Will they make it international? I can't imagine Apple wouldn't, but it's undeniably tough to secure rights to this type of model worldwide.
2. Goodbye Android app? You know, the Android app the Lala Team said they were working on? (Read Wired.com's article) Will Apple kill it so they won't have to support another platform?
3. Will they position Lala to compete with Spotify (which is supposed to be launching in the US soon)? I love Lala and 10 cents is dirt cheap, but it's tough to compete with free.
@Tubular
We have Spotify over here. I laughed when I read the “gives users one full free play of any song in its library” bit.
It doesn't really compare with several million, on demand, for free (ad supported). I can't help but think Apple brought the wrong company.
"Lala's business model of selling and hosting digital music was a complete abhorrence to an innovative music startup -- named Lala."
Apple probably bought Lala because they were making a Palm Pre app and they wanted to squash it.
Another vote for proofreading your crappy artices before you post them. Just painful to read.
@mivanov11
"artices"
@Jack Burn!
@Jack Ahaha, touché! I submit my proofreading was still better.
They were making a Palm Pre app??? NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!1!!!!!one
Damn you Apple! Damn you to Hell! "Open" my pimpled, speckled a**
Man, what a fantastic sentence.
"As Apple steps up flirtation with the cloud, though, the question, though, is whether is whether single track sales will even last for decades more."
Engadget, you need to focus on your quality. It's really going down the shitter.
@(Unverified) See the first post - that's the edited version...
@(Unverified)
Just look at how much worse their comment system got with the upgrade.
As Apple steps up flirtation with the cloud, though, the question, though, is whether is whether single track sales will even last for decades more.
WTF?
I don't really understand what this article is trying to say.
@(Unverified)
though the though the lala buisness model is though in apple's court.
All these words, no mention of last.fm? Impressive bit of Pandora pandering there.