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

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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.

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.”

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