According to the New York Times, Apple has purchased LaLa, a four-year-old streaming music service. LaLa allows its users to stream their music from the “cloud” rather than download copies as is iTunes’ current method.
The question remains, why has Apple purchased LaLa? An Apple spokesman said the company “buys smaller technology companies all the time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.” Interesting…
The NYT also says that LaLa went to Apple to be acquired and Apple has their sights set on the company’s engineers who are quite adept at the whole streaming-music-in-the-cloud processes. My guess? Apple is planning on entering the music streaming business; it’s simply another revenue stream iTunes can quickly dominate. In the future…iTunes users will have the option to download physical music files to their computer or stream their music a la Pandora and the like. We shall wait and see.