Apple's Lala music team working on video streaming service for 2010 launch?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted August 3rd 2010 4:53AM
posted August 3rd 2010 4:53AM
Naturally, all of this makes sense in light of Apple's plan to open a 500,000 square foot data center (pictured above) in North Carolina later this year at a cost of $1 billion. What better facility to serve up 99 cent streaming TV rentals to a completely overhauled Apple TV in the home, and highly mobile iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone devices on the go. Anecdotally, it's not like Apple's showing too much concern with storage limits on its iOS devices -- the iPhone 4 just launched in the same 16GB and 32GB offerings as the 3GS instead of the typical doubling of flash storage we've come to expect from new iPhone iterations. So really, the question isn't if, it's just a matter of when.
Original image courtesy of Cult of Mac
This facility is about 45 minutes from my house. I should ride out there one day just to see what's going on.
Better hurry before Google does it first!!
buying these companies is just to avoid competition in the music business
@drummerdude1390
Apple isn't in the music business. They're in the retail business. They bought Lala to bring more functionality to iTunes/MobileME.
Music videos died in the 90's
@LordThree
People who have apple products don't know this once apple is finsihed they will say that they have a magical and innovation in history then steve will say "I present to you MUSIC VIDEOS" then the crowd will go wild and it will be the hip thing to do.
You can get music videos on YouTube for free. Then again, when steve finishes this building, he will tell all his followers that YouTube is bad.
@AndroidFanBoy
And I'm sure he'll do that while continuing to supply a free YouTube app.
Idiot.
You people that think this will be just for music videos, or just for music? You're idiots. Apple bought LaLa for their technology, not their product. Get a clue.
Here is what I think. Streaming music in the manor that LaLa did it is perhaps one day in the future and might be limited to the stuff you buy on itunes either full out or 'streaming only' and no upload (discourages the whole bittorrent thing the labels will say)
For now what Apple could pull from Lala is the one time full play features (a lot of folks gripe about 30 second previews), the genius like features such as the 'mix it up' sample playlists and the social media tie-ins
For video there is some logic in streaming a rental rather than downloading it. They might even change up the rules and do something more hulu like where it goes in a queue (with a limit of say 10 rentals at a time) you can play it as much as you want but in X days it drops out of your queue. They might even be able to get the tv shows in on the game. I think that folks would be very willing to pay as much as $25 a month for streaming access (even with my sample queueing) to the entire itunes TV library which unlike hulu has no ads.
As for the data center, I suspect that it is there to support all things Apple. itunes, mobile me, whatever lalalike they are plotting. Which could be why there's been no set statement about which single thing the center is for.
Do people really buy iTunes DRM'd movies?
Now Apple will make it possible to store these purchased movies on their servers so you can watch them on multiple devices?
Screw that! Why buy movies then pay to stream them?
Ever heard of NetFlix?
@bonedog73
"Screw that! Why buy movies then pay to stream them?"
You're making a huge assumption here loosely based on a rumor. No one is saying that Apple will sell you a movie and then charge you yet again just to stream it. It makes far more sense for them to sell their content and allow you to access it wherever, on whatever iTunes-related device you have. You'd pay for the content, not the streaming.
My own guess is that their current pricing structure is failing and the ones that are the most successful are based on streaming (Hulu and Netflix, for example). They've got to fix this. Fewer people are ripping or buying their movies and storing their multimedia files locally and more and more people are using streaming services. Apple will still probably sell their stuff, but they need to do it cheaper and they need to allow for streaming. Hell, I'd even pay some monthly fee for unlimited access to the entire iTunes catalog, even DRM'd, akin to Microsoft's Zune pass thingy, as long as they did it for a decent price and allowed me to stream to any of my devices. Their video catalog is great. I'd wager that it might even be the best. An unlimited streaming plan with a price similar to cable would be awesome. But, like bonedog73, I'm just speculating here.
StreamToMe allows you to stream your movies and music anywhere right now to your iPhone/iPad and adjusts to network speed on the fly. New update sees your iTunes playlists too. Of course it won't do DRM'd crap so there's that...
I read that Apple's new data center is expected to have more bandwidth and also data processing capability than the total of some small developed countries. Now that's impressive.
@Narutogrey I forgot to add that it also seems like a waste for so much power just to support iTunes.
There has to be something else for the data center. It's not efficient to have streaming from one location. You need to put your DC near the users, so, you need several of them.