Apple buys music service lala.com - but what are they planning to do with it?

Apple has recently opened the valet and bought internet music service lala.com which uses smart cloud computing  to allow users to share and store their music libraries online, but what are Apple’s plans for lala.com and their service, not to mention for their own iTunes?

Through iTunes Apple is the clear leader in music downloads in the world,  especially if you exclude illegal downloading, but they have recently come under increased pressure from other online music services such as Spotify and the rumors that Google has plans for a rival music service as well. However the move to buy cloud computing music service lala.com has raised a lot of questions about exactly what Apple is planning to do with it.

There are plenty of specualations around both their plans for the new acquisition and how much they paid for it, and it is likely that some of the speculations will be closer to the truth than others.

Lala.com uses smart cloud computing to create an online shop for users to share and buy music. You can choose to upload your own music to the service, create playlists etc that other users can listen to, once for free, and they can then choose to pay 10c to listen to song online, or pay 79c to download the same song. This type of music streaming service is similar to what for example Spotify is offering, which has taken Europe by storm in the last year, and recently launched their Spotify iPhone App.

Now Apple could be looking to bringing that same technology to their own iTunes, allowing their millions of users to stream full songs and albums, seeing the acquisition of lala.com as a strategic move against their new competitors. Or it could be a different kind of strategic move where Apple is simply aquiring the talent and technology that sits behind lala.com to avoid any up and coming competitors to get their hands on it, striking early so to speak without having a clear objective of what they will use the service for themselves yet.

With the recent “conflicts” between Apple and Google the last could be an example of Apple moving fast to stop Google from acquiring a service that should have fit in nicely with their own cloud computing and music interest, but now i am just speculating.

I guess we just have to wait and see what Apple’s next move is to get the real answers to the question.

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