Apple Inc has acquired digital music service Lala. The move is not all that unexpected as the dominant online music retailer explores new models for selling music. Apple confirmed the purchase on Friday. iTunes is the leading music service worldwide with more than 70 percent of all digital music sales. With more than 11 million songs, the iTunes store is also the most complete download store. However, newer music streaming services such as MySpace Music and Spotify have begun to win over music fans in the last year. The move could suggest that Apple does believ that the whole music model migt shift to a streaming one.
Lala allows users to stream from the Internet any tune in its catalog of more than 8 million songs once for free, and then sells unlimited streams for 10 cents per track and MP3 downloads starting at 79 cents. The company has around 100.000 customers and recently partnered with Google to provide users song samples along with links to purchase the music. Lala has also partnered with Facebook to offer music through the social networking site.
Acquiring Lala means iTunes will probably enforce its very own download store or it might want to develop a browser based iTunes download store as well as we pointed out a while back. It could also mean that Apple might have a better idea how to monetize streams, which would be excellent news for the music industry. It’s less good news for Spotify which needs to get a 2nd life in order to survive.
Apple has opened its 
Apple has updated links generated via the iTunes Store “Copy Link” feature to direct to a Web site called ‘iTunes Preview’. This new service gives customers the option to view content without launching the application itself. This way you can now share music links via iTunes without the need to launch Apple’s media suite. On top of that the iTunes Preview page allows you to browse artists and albums on Apple’s website. Included in the info provided are artist biographies, similar acts, details on song prices as well as individual track lengths.
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US-based download site BlueBeat.com is selling 
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Google is partnering with at least 4 online music services for its Google Music service (in fact nothing more than an enhanced search). There will streaming songs from LaLa.com, song samples from iLike.com, and song purchasing options from Apple’s iTunes and from Amazon MP3. Muztec learned that a 5th partner would also join, namely iMeem. Revenue from the service will be split between the music servics and the record labels as Google views the system more as a way to retain users rather than a direct revenue source.
The music blog aggregator The Hype Machine is working on an iPhone app. The iPhone app will provide a radio-like experience with royalties for the music paid for by charging for the initial download of the app. It’s still unknwon when this app would be released as of yet. One problem though, the Hype Machine will also be aggregating MP3s from music blogs that are unauthorised… Not such a good start that is.
Michael Jackson’s newest (posthumous) album “This Is It” will be sold through iTunes. So what? Well, various blogs reported that Apple would have been refused ‘access’ to the release because it insists that songs can be sold individually. Bollocks say Sony and Epic Records, Jackson’s label. And it’s also a complete bull story because labels that add their material to iTunes have the option to choose between single track or album sales. And this has never been an issue with Apple. So if some say that the Michael Jackson album has been retracted, it’s simple false info from people who clearly do not know how digital download aggregation works.