Hello June, Goodbye Lala

**Michael Essany** · 06-01-2010, 08:15 AM

The end of May also brought with it the end of LaLa.

Last night, May 31st, Apple officially shut-down its freshly-acquired music streaming service. The closure of Lala, however, didn't come as a big surprise, given that Apple told the world of its plan to close Lala shortly after the acquisition. Still, it is coming as an unpleasant discovery at the beginning of a new month to find that Lala simply is no more.

Hoping to make Lala subscribers feel as though they haven't been wronged by the closure, Apple is making it right with those who still have credit with the popular music service. "In appreciation of your support," reads a note on the website, "you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple's iTunes Store."

Now that Lala is gone, all eyes turn to Apple and its suspected plan to roll out some form of cloud-based version of iTunes, replete with quality streaming capabilities - ostensibly, the reason Apple scooped up Lala in the first place. Clearly, Apple didn't buy Lala just to shut it down. And now with Lala - at least as we knew it - gone from the digital music landscape, it is safe to assume that Apple will make an announcement in the very near future about a sweet little update for iTunes.

With the new iPhone likely to be introduced next week at the 2010 WWDC, some even expect a streaming service through iTunes to be introduced at the same time, given that the 4th generation iPhone is optimized for a top-notch streaming music/audio experience. While it isn't yet known when Apple will do something with Lala, it is certain that Cupertino will, indeed, do something. But, as usual, we're at the mercy of Apple's mysterious time frame.

And life without Lala could make the wait feel a whole lot longer.

Image via LaLa

**The Maestro** · 06-01-2010, 08:26 AM

That's nice of them, just like when they lowered the price of the original iPhone by $200 and gave me a $100 iTunes card, nice one

**CaptainChaos** · 06-01-2010, 08:32 AM

Lala was very cool. Why buy it, shut it down, and then open a cloud based iTunes?

**reanimationxp** · 06-01-2010, 08:36 AM

That's how Apple handles innovation.

**Jawcl** · 06-01-2010, 08:36 AM

That's really too bad, I liked Lala

**CaptainChaos** · 06-01-2010, 08:41 AM

Back to using Pandora and such I guess.

**eortizr** · 06-01-2010, 09:02 AM

I did not even know what LaLa was. We have pandora. Iheart. Lastfm. Etc.

**McFearless** · 06-01-2010, 09:05 AM

That's such a disappointment. I'm really going to miss being able to stream an entire album before I buy it

**adp** · 06-01-2010, 09:07 AM

I used to like Pandora. But now, Slacker Radio FTW. No dark-related songs, unlimited skips for $3/month. Song requests (in which they actually play the song you request, unlike Pandora).