Lalapple

There was an interesting news article in The New York Times today: Apple’s interested in buying Lala.

What would be the purpose of this? Lala’s strength is in streaming your music collection online. If you don’t have the space for all your music on your computer, or use public computers a lot, then this offers a really nice solution.

What Apple has is, among other things, a lot of iPhones & iPods out there with limited space. My iPod has 8GB of space - along with a ton of applications, that doesn’t leave room for a lot of music. I can’t fit much more than 400 songs on there (with all the other stuff it has on it). There’s a reason they still sell 120GB iPods - lots of people want all their music on their iPods.

So, why is Apple looking to buy Lala? I think they want to create a streaming music service - for iPhones & iPods, in particular, but for Macs & PC’s with iTunes as well (or maybe even with MobileMe integration). That iPhone will no longer be limited to what’s on the flash drive and what’s on Internet radio stations - even lowly 4GB iPhone users can get their entire music collection from anywhere they get a cellphone signal.

It might explain why the Lala app for the iPhone has been going through “approval” for the past 9 months. Apple probably held it off because they were looking to integrate it into something of their own.

Also, Ars Technica thinks this is unlikely, because Lala uses Flash - but because the Lala app has been waiting for approval since at least the middle of March, it’s probable that Lala’s had an Apple-compatible streaming radio system for nearly a year, so this merely makes it all the more likely that Apple can convert the system for their own use.

In any case, I’m looking forward to seeing what Apple can do with Lala… so long as it’s not destroying my Lala music collection in the process!