Will the good experience at Lala continue? Apple Strikes Deal to Buy the Music Start-Up Lala | The New York Times - Brad Stone
In the most recent sign that Apple is looking at alternative ways for people to store and play their digital music, the company has agreed to buy Lala, a four-year-old start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., a person with knowledge of the deal said Friday.
Lala, unlike Apple’s iTunes, lets users play the music they own from ... cloud.
I hope this is not the end of good times at Lala. I don't trust Apple in media matters, too beholden to analogue media businesses, ie: Disney.
As the article says, the licenses Lala worked out will not transfer to Apple and they think Apple is buying the engineers. That's good. Lala is the most friendly music service, it looks and acts great. If Apple can retain that welcoming interface and friendly service -- cool.
Let's hope so.
btw: I've used the CD trading service for over 3 years, received 400 or so new-to-me CDs at about $1.50 each (getting rid of an equal amount of those space wasting jewel cases in the process) and I've bought downloads from them, but, I've never uploaded my 200GBs of music, just didn't think I needed it, I leave the house everyday with 6GBs of music and podcasts I haven't heard yet - that's what I want to listen to away from home. But, I can see the benefit of having my collection in the cloud.
I'm always afraid my backup is not adequate. In theory, I trust the cloud servers and the IT Sys Admins more than my management of the WD terabyte drives sitting on my desk.
