In 2009, the music streaming service LaLa was snapped up by Apple in a typical move from the Cupertino based giants, and as yet nothing has come of it in any way, shape, or form. And today, executives at Apple declared that the move was indeed comparable to insurance, and they have no plans to replace the almost entirely dominant iTunes distribution platform with a streaming service.
However, along with the discontinuing of Apple’s current MobileMe service, there is speculation arising that at last something will become of LaLa, as it becomes the building blocks for a new music streaming service from Apple, allowing iTunes users to upload their iTunes libraries to the ‘cloud’, and access the music from any device connected to the Internet. Of course, this is exactly what LaLa was originally set up to do back in 2007, so it is not altogether unfathomable that it may be the eventuality we are heading for.
MobileMe being discontinued, may lead to a complete revamping of the service, which has also been strongly rumoured of late, and it would be a perfect opportunity for Apple to implement such a feature, what with the roaring success iTunes downloads have enjoyed over the last few years and it could also be the ideal model to justify pricing MobileMe so ambitiously, should it continue where it left off.
It may also be the timely birth of the iTunes Replay service, that was first rumoured back in 2009 with the launch of iTunes 8, which I suppose eventually turned out to be video rentals on iTunes, however the name Replay never came to be, so it may well be that paths were crossed and iTunes Replay will, in fact, be a cloud-based system allowing users to store and access their libraries in the cloud.
Having said that, the name Replay doesn’t exactly make the same fit it would do with an on-demand TV service, with a ‘cloud’ music streaming service, so it’s quite unlikely that this will be true, however that’s not to say that the service won’t take shape as part of MobileMe. However, we’ve previously considered the possibility of a potential Apple cloud-based streaming music service before and nothing has become of it, so do you think this will actually happen? Or are Apple more than happy with their current download-based content-selling business?
Google, rapidly becoming one of Apple’s fiercest rivals on more than one front in the technology industry, is also preparing to launch a music streaming service alongside a download service, in a similar mould to iTunes. That’s according to Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha, anyway. Of course, this would add even more spice to the contest between iOS and Android, with iTunes, synchronisation and integration being one of the big sellers, to me at least, of iOS devices. With a hoard of Android tablets hitting the market this year and last, it’s about time Google took another step to keeping all of them in cahoots with one another.
So, what do you think of these rumours, then? Likely that Apple will sneak a ‘digital locker’ of music streaming into the new MobileMe? Would that be a good thing? Or will you prefer to stay with your current Spotify streaming music option or move over to Google’s inevitable and imminent music service as soon as it launches? Let us know in the comments section below, as always.
Source: Ars Technica