Lala bought by Apple, streaming iTunes Store around the bend?

Earlier today, Greg Sandoval at CNET reported that Apple was in talks to acquire out music-streaming assist Lala; his example suggested that these talks were in modern stages, and a care could happen at some time -- Apple meet needed to clew on the speckled line.

As of this evening, Sandoval's gossip is looking a aggregation more same a finished deal. The Wall Street Journal and the NY Times are both confirming that Apple has pulled the causing and spent a miniscule fraction of those zillions in change on Lala. No numbers were announced, but the WSJ notes that an assets of $20 meg in Lala from filmmaker Music Group was written down by more than 50% early this year.

Why Lala for Apple? The AP noted that Lala co-founder Bill Nguyen demoed an iPhone app in Oct that allowed 'intelligently cached' songs to be streamed to your iPhone, with the recently-streamed songs replayable modify outside of radiophone coverage areas; Wired suggests that Lala's bundle-payment setup, where users acquire course credits, could save Apple's iTunes Store jillions in credit card fulfillment charges. The care is due to place Nguyen and the Lala engineers on Apple's payroll, though the Times notes that Lala's agreements with the labels to course penalization are non-transferable.

Lala's help for penalization moving is an interesting one; the assist scans your hard drive for songs you already possess and lets you course them at will, attractive the construct Apple's also providing with Home Share to the Web (other services also let you deal media between iTunes instances). You crapper also choose to course songs you don't already possess for $0.10 a piece, and 'upgrade' to a downloadable edition at will.

Lala also fresh made an commendation with Google to offer penalization previews in Google searches, greatly expanding Lala's reach. It's not country whether Apple's acquire module hit some affect on that arrangement

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