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Apple
Apple Has Acquired Lala
Earlier today we covered rumors
that Apple was in talks to acquire streaming music service Lala
. Now New York Times tech reporter Brad Stone has tweeted
that it’s a done deal. He writes, “Apple has acquired digital music startup Lala. Now updating our story”. You can find the NYT story here
This could be bad news for Lala users. It’s unlikely that the innovative deals negotiated by Lala will survive through the acquisition. For over a year, Lala users have been purchasing the rights to stream their music an unlimited number of times for ten cents per song. If the deals with the music labels go up in smoke, Lala may lose the right to stream those songs. In other words, all the money users have been spending on web songs may go down the drain. If the deals are nullified, hopefully Apple will renegotiate them to at least cover existing purchases until it releases its own streaming music service. We’ve reached out to Lala but have yet to hear back.
Likewise, this may well affect the Lala music gifts that have been recently offered by Facebook, and it could also harm the Music OneBox service Google recently launched (though Google can still rely on MySpace/iLike for its song streams).
Stone writes that Apple is interested in Lala because of its engineering talent and technology, and that it was Lala that initiated the discussions. From the Times:
One person with knowledge of the deal, but who was not authorized to discuss it, said that the negotiations originated when Lala executives concluded that their prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim and initiated discussions with Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president in charge of iTunes.
This person said Apple would primarily be buying Lala’s engineers, including its energetic co-founder Bill Nguyen, and their experience with cloud-based music services.
The deal makes sense. It seems inevitable that Apple will eventually launch its own cloud-based streaming music service. And that’s exactly what Lala is — an iTunes in the cloud, with some interesting pricing mechanics.
A few other interesting things to note. This acquisition comes a little more than a month after Lala was integrated into Google’s OneBox and Facebook’s gift store. Lala may well have been viewing these launches as last-chance efforts to find a path to profitability. Given these reports that Lala’s “prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim”, it looks like those launches may not have gone as well as Lala hoped.
via techcrunch.com
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Facebook VP Leaves A Love Letter For Apple
“For every dev that leaves iPhone in frustration, 1000 new ones join up. iPhone is an unstoppable train regardless of how much we complain.” – Joe Hewitt in a tweet
yesterday.
How right he is.
Facebook’s VP of Communications Elliot Schrage
has just left us a comment on our post from yesterday explaining that while Hewitt may be moving on, Facebook “has a great team of engineers taking over iPhone related development.” May an entire team blossom, apparently.
Schrage left the comment because there has been much brouhaha over developer Joe Hewitt’s decision to stop working on the Facebook iPhone app because he’s fed up with Apple’s App Store policies. Schrage obviously wants to make it clear that Hewitt’s stance does not in any way signify how Facebook as a company feels towards Apple. We don’t really think our story yesterday implied that, but okay, noted.
Here’s the full comment that Schrage left on the post from yesterday:
This is Elliot Schrage, VP of Communications at Facebook. There’s been a fair amount of confusion and speculation about Joe’s comments and whether they reflect the official position of Facebook. They don’t. Facebook’s relationship with Apple and our commitment to the iPhone platform remain strong. IIn fact, though Joe himself will be moving to new projects, Facebook has a great team of engineers taking over iPhone related development. More generally, our work bringing Facebook Connect to the iPhone and with iTunes, iPhoto and other great products over the past year should illustrate our commitment to expanding our relationship with Apple and finding new ways to offer new services and features to the people who use both our products.
A beautifully crafted (minus the typo, of course) piece of PR work there. Are you reading this, Apple? Facebook is asking nicely not to be put in the penalty box.
Seriously though, while Facebook may not be on the same page as Hewitt with regard to the App Store policies, we are. As much as I think Apple generally makes great products, the App Store continues to be rife with hypocrisy and heartache. And it’s only going to get worse as it continues to grow. It’s good to see a developer of Hewitt’s caliber take the stance.
[photo: flickr/appsara
]
via techcrunch.com
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