Last night, Apple shut down the Lala music streaming service that it acquired five months ago, just like the company said it would. Visitors to Lala.com now see a message that says, “The Lala service has been discontinued as of May 31st, 2010.”
If you’re a Lala user, your first concern is probably what will happen to the money you spent on songs and other products and services from the site.
It turns out you won’t be cutting your losses. All the money you’ve spent on Lala will be refunded to you in the form of an iTunes Store credit code sent to you via e-mail. Apple says that it will round refunds under $10 up to the nearest $1 and refunds of more than $10 to the nearest $5.
The second question that pops to mind more interesting, though: What will replace Lala?
Apple didn’t drop $80 million on the service just to close it down and be done with it. The Wall Street Journal was told by “people familiar with the matter” that Apple will launch its own version of Lala’s unique music library hosting service. If the WSJ’s sources are correct, you’ll be able to upload your iTunes library to Apple’s servers so you can listen to them on other computers or a mobile device like your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, as long as you have Internet access. You might also be able to buy cheap, streaming-only versions of songs like you could on Lala.
The mobile aspect seems the most likely component of Apple’s post-Lala plan, given that the ability to combine streaming music from the Internet with other tasks is one of the major pillars of the recently-announced iPhone OS 4.0. Also note that the Lala shutdown took place exactly one week before next Monday’s WWDC event, where Apple will probably unveil the new iPhone. Will Lala’s replacement be featured prominently in Steve Jobs’s keynote next week? Stay tuned.
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