Lala is shutting down as of May 31st. Very disappointing news for many users of the service who actually preferred it over iTunes. The service is now closed to new users. Apple acquired Lala back in December of 2009 when it seemed that the cloud-based service was in financial trouble. This is after Lala seemed to be making big moves in partnerships with Google and Facebook that should have helped turn business around.
If you recall, Lala is behind Google’s Onebox feature, which lets you play and purchase music directly from your search results. It allowed you to play any song once for free and songs that you do purchase are available for play from your online dashboard. When I first covered Lala, I used the phrase “iTunes in the cloud.”
To understand the ramifications of this purchase, it’s important to understand what Lala really is: iTunes in the cloud. Instead of purchasing music from a website and downloading it to your computer, you simply buy what you want and play it instantly from your library in the cloud. Lala will also match the songs on your computer to the ones in their library and adds them to your online collection. You can even play any song for free, but only once. It’s only 10 cents to add a song to your online library and play it unlimited. 79 cents to download the actual mp3.
I also mentioned that users might benefit from Apple’s purchase of Lala in the long run. It was already pretty obvious that Apple would shut it down and this was simply a grab for talent and a way to remove a competitor. Why buy from iTunes for 69 cents to $1.29 per song when I can just pay 10 cents to Lala and play any song unlimited via the web?
For those who have invested their time and their money into Lala, the credits for your Lala web songs will be moved over to iTunes. If you have an outstanding wallet balance on Lala, it will also be migrated to iTunes. Gift cards will be moved to your wallet balance or otherwise refunded. In other words, you are now an iTunes customer so get used to it. We can only hope to see some of the features we loved about Lala being integrated into the new iTunes service when it does finally launch.