Since November 7, 2008, LaLa has been my favorite place to listen to, discover and buy new music on the web. They have an outstanding database of music, they let you stream songs for free, they let you upload your own music library to the cloud, they let you buy songs sans DRM / AAC, and they allow you buy "web" versions of songs for just pennies, allowing fans to always be able to come back and listen. When I heard in December 2009 that Apple had bought the company I got worried.
Word on the street is that after they shut down LaLa on May 31, Apple will be using Lala's technology to create it's own iTunes cloud service.
I'll preface this next thought by saying, I love Apple: I'm writing this post with a MacBook Pro, I answer calls with my iPhone, I listen to music with iTunes, I live stream Apple conferences. What I don't like is the idea of Apple having a near monopoly on music distribution. It's bad for the music industry and it's bad for the consumer.
Up until six months ago, I thought that Lala was going to keep iTunes in check. Now I'm not sure. For a really good look into Apples potential strategy moving forward, check out this article on TechCrunch from January 2010.
