Apple-acquired Lala Will Shutdown on May 31st, Offer iTunes Credit For All Purchases One Week Before WWDC

John Brownlee ()

Apple-acquired Lala Will Shutdown on May 31st, Offer iTunes Credit For All Purchases One Week Before WWDC

When Apple acquired music streaming service Lala year, almost everyone assumed that iTunes’ tenth iteration would find Apple’s music syncing software re-envisioned as a service which allowed users to stream their tunes from anywhere without actually having their musics locally stored.

That’s still a safe bet , especially as Apple phases out their older iPod models and shrinks down the footprint of 3G SIM cards to be installable in even the smallest chassis. But it did raise a question: would existing Lala customers be left high and dry by the Apple buyout?

No, as it turns out. While Lala has just announced that their service will be shutting down on May 31st for good, with no new users accepted. Lala’s going the extra mile by converting any money spent on streaming music into iTunes credit. That counts even if you have unused Lala credit. How generous.

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As someone who doesn’t use Lala, I’m more interested in the timing: May 31st is just a week before WWDC. Can we expect the announcement of a streaming iTunes 10 in June? It seems a bit early for such a move, but if I had to hazard a guess based upon the timing of the Lala shutdown, my guess would be “hell yeah.”

9 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Apple, News, Software |

  • http://ihbs.co.uk Ben

    Very interesting. What would make more solid eveidence is to find out what happens to the people at Lala. If the people who work there dissapear with the company & service, then I wouldnt expect a streaming announcement.

    Hopefully theyve kept the team and streaming services will fall to them!

  • http://arronhunt.com Arron Hunt

    Excuse my french, but What the Fuck Apple?

    I used LaLa over iTunes for many reasons. One being able to stream my library anywhere (except my ipod touch). The second was that songs where only $0.89 USD. Compare that to iTunes $1.29 and think of how much you can save. The Third was only $0.10 for web songs. I could purchas an entire album for a little over a dollar. Now all my web songs are going to vanish.

    I appreciate them actually crediting us for iTunes. When I first heard Apple aquired LaLa my first thought was “They’re shutting it down to remove competition, and my some-odd $75 is going to be wasted”.

    It’s great that they are crediting, but I still won’t be able to replace everything they are taking away. And I was desperatly waiting for the LaLa app to hit the appstore.

    Frustrating…

  • Gretchen

    This really sucks .. I loved LaLa .. iTunes music just doesn’t cover it. I also appreciate them crediting us, but I have a feeling they will credit us too little because iTunes music costs way more than most songs on LaLa. :( Ohh Apple how you think you rule the world..

  • BoxMac

    Anyone who uses this is, to put it mildly, “misdirected”.

    WHY WOULD YOU PAY FOR STREAMING *ANYHTING* WHEN YOU CAN BUT IT FROM ITUNES/AMAZON MP3/OR ANY OTHER NUMBER OF ONLINE MP3 SELLERS ?!?

    “LaLa” ….
    “HuLu” ….
    “FooFah” ….
    “HooHah” ….
    “BingBong” ….

    *Triple* YECCH ….

  • Pete Mortensen

    Actually, they are leaving us high and dry. They’re doing nothing to remunerate you for any web albums purchased. I’ll need to pony up another 79cents to buy those as permanent songs or risk losing them forever.

  • http://cultofmac.com lonnie lazar

    The day Apple’s LaLa purchase was announced I tweeted that I was going to be really pissed off if Apple killed LaLa.

    Now I am.

    The iTunes credits are meaningless unless Apple unveils a streaming service with songs priced at 10¢. Fooey.

  • beach bum

    Sad Day. Lala will be missed. It was such a great site, listen to music that I only imagined to hear, to read about the artist & you could search for a video of that song & play it on utube. What a shame! if something identical replaces it, it will be another thing that – remember when you could do… moment in time.

    For now I have to cram listen to what I dreamed about.

    a comment,
    From a poor folk

  • josh

    Commenters have it right when they say Apple screwed Lala users. I had access to more than 600 songs streaming. For the same amount of money, I can buy about 65 MP3s. I am definitely much worse off. Apple is morphing into Microsoft, shady business practices, monopolizing the market, crushing innovation and competition and treating loyal customers with disdain.

  • DrKlahn

    I feel like I was boned hard. I have a lot of trading credits, but Lala abandoned its CD traders. Now what am I going to get out of this deal? Nothing.