Apple To Shut Down Lala On May 31 438
dirk and a large number of other distressed readers let us know that Apple is shuttering Lala, the music service they bought last December, on May 31. "Apple will transfer any remaining money in a user's account to iTunes, and will credit users (via iTunes) for any web songs that were purchased. It's a real shame, as Lala was a much better music service, offering songs in straight MP3 format. Its web service was innovative and ahead of its time. And it was one of the few places that would let you listen to an entire song to sample it (after one complete listen, you then could only hear a 30-second sample)." Reader Dhandforth adds: "10-cent favorites will now cost 9.9x more. What's worse, a community of music fans (followers and followees) will disappear on May 31. Evil. Sigh."
While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I know people who did, and none of them are happy about this. I've herad nothing but good things about Lala, it's a shame that it will be going away :/
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I've only heard of them because Google had Lala integrated into search results.
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Me too. But I did use that fact sometimes when I was looking for a song I had heard on the radio or in a movie or something. I'm kind of mad that it'll be shut down. Granted, I didn't really buy any music from them, so I did nothing to stop it, but it was helpful.
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>>>Google had Lala integrated into search results.
I feel like sabotaging Apple. And costing them money. (Goes off to put Google/Lala on infinite loop.)
Lala's the service that also powered billboard.com, so you could listen to the top songs on the chart. I wonder what they'll do now?
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I don't get the summary. Do they honestly thing that 128k mp3s are better than the 256k AACs that iTunes offers? I get them moaning about the price increase, but that statement is rather weird.
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I personally have a dozen devices (many of them older) that'll play those 128k MP3 files as is, and NONE of them can process an AAC file.
While the sound quality of the AAC file is miles better, 128k VBR MP3 is good enough for many portables, and I can certainly understand folks being grumpy about now having to perform a format conversion before being able to listen to their purchased music files...
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I personally have a dozen devices (many of them older) that'll play those 128k MP3 files as is, and NONE of them can process an AAC file.
Wow, you must have some *really* old devices, I've not seen a device that can't play mpeg 4 audio in the past 4-5 years.
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Also, 128K VBR MP3s are much higher quality than a 128K AAC, regardless of whether you use CBR or VBR encoding of the AAC.
(Score: -1, Just Plain Wrong)
AAC (mpeg 4 audio) is strictly better than ac3 (mpeg 2 audio), which in turn is strictly better than mp3 (mpeg 1 audio). You may be able to find an extremely good mp3 encoder that can beat out an average aac encoder at the same bit rate, but that doesn't make the format better, nor does it make it impossible to build a good AAC encoder. For what it's worth btw, CoreAudio (which apple use both in iTunes and for encoding iTMS songs), is actually a bloody good encoder.
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's the licensing. You have to negotiate licensing with every music publisher you carry. I'd imagine that the people responsible for Lala don't want to do that because it sounds like hell and they've already cashed out.
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Isn't there some kind of conditional licensing where if you have X license, then that is the minimum to be agreed to on any further license? I remembered reading about it for music - it's something like if you agree to 50c/song and a new agreement comes along, you can't ask for less than 50c/song.
I bet that's why apple crushed it after obtaining it - they probably were pissed that lala was giving the record company a better deal than apple was, or that lala was getting a better deal than apple.
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:4, Insightful)
They've successfully done it once, though. Seems like an easy way to generate that cash AGAIN when someone else comes along to buy them up, since they won't be competing with their predecessor.
You can bet that Apple added a no-comptete clause to the contract; in return for Apple's cash, the Lala crew agrees not to create a competing service for x number of years. Standard Operating Procedure in those situations.
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect Apple will simply incorporate those features into iTunes at some point. They have already moved to make iTunes available via the web. That said, I would be blind to not acknowledge that it's possible this was to prevent direct competition with Lala if/when iTunes adapts similar features.
I am curious about the summary and the indication that MP3 format from Lala was somehow better than the AAC audio from iTunes though. Neither is encrypted, and the potential quality is much better with AAC. You would be hard pressed to find music devices that only support MP3 these days.
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't seem very conducive to a competitive market. :(
Tell that to the Lala owners who, rather than make their money selling songs to individuals at 50 cents a pop, chose to make their money selling in one giant transaction to their competitor, Apple. Good for them.
No duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because anyone actually thought that Apple was going to keep running two competing music stores?
Re:No duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well......
I hear people objecting about media consolidation. Like how NBC Universal owns ~10 major cable channels. And now Comcast owns NBC Universal, so they can control what gets shown or not shown on broadcast (say goodbye to BSG or SG1 reruns on free tv). It appears we're witnessing the same thing in the web, with competitors gradually disappearing to leave behind a monopoly or duopoly.
I will leave it up to you to decide if that's bad or good.
Not an issue on the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Well......
I hear people objecting about media consolidation.[...] so they can control what gets shown or not shown on broadcast
Except the Internet is a totally different world.
Old world distribution channels are limited by the number of venues, whether those are radio stations, TV channels, concert halls, or feet of shelf space on record stores. In the old world, artists would be shut out if radio stations wouldn't play them or if Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble wouldn't put them on the shelves. Consolidation in the old world meant even fewer venues, and fewer venues meant less variety.
iTunes sells every song it can get a license to
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Makes you wonder why they purchased it in the first place...
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Re:No duh? (Score:4, Informative)
Makes you wonder why they purchased it in the first place...
To eliminate some of the competition. Anybody with any sense knew that when they bought them. They only kept them running this long for two reasons. One, to try and migrate some of the users to Itunes. Two, to see if there was anything that Lala did that they wanted to implement in Itunes.
Apple responds to complaints... (Score:5, Funny)
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Steve jobs sticks his fat wads of cash in his ears.. "LALALALALALALALALA"
I Recall That Acquisition Ceremony (Score:5, Funny)
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I wish there was a way to metamoderate funny.
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Or maybe it's just that their business model didn't work. Everyone's favorite companies are those that are giving free services and running at a loss, and then they complain when they turn to advertising, subscriptions, or just go belly up. iTunes is a sustainable business model, and Lala is not. Deal with it.
You Have No Clue About Lala, Do You? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe it's just that their business model didn't work.
Bizarre that Apple would front cash money for a failing operation. It would probably have been a bit smarter to simply let them fall flat on their face instead of spending so much cash, right?
Everyone's favorite companies are those that are giving free services and running at a loss, and then they complain when they turn to advertising, subscriptions, or just go belly up. iTunes is a sustainable business model, and Lala is not. Deal with it.
What the hell are you talking about? On Lala, you could pay 10 cents per song to stream it as much as you want, or $.99-1.29 to own it outright. And that was not sustainable? They simply offered more options than Apple, they didn't give songs away. Where are you getting your information ... ?
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Buying and shutting down competitors is incredibly common, even if the competitor is losing money it can still make good business sense. You do it if they have some IP you want (a patent, for example), or if you're afraid they will set a poor legal precedent that will hurt you (Google buying Youtube), or if you just want their customer list.
Right. But those reasons don't apply well here. There doesn't seem to have been an IP issue. Not aware of any legal issues. I think iTunes has all the customer lis
Re:You Have No Clue About Lala, Do You? (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes is not in and of itself profitable.
You're a fool. They're celebrating billions of iTunes song sales and you're telling me that they're taking a hit on each of them? Is that why The New York Times calls it a "profit machine" [nytimes.com]? Is that why Billboard estimates they made a half billion in profit from song sales one year [wired.com]? The most conservative estimate I can find puts them closer to a 10% profit margin on song sales [coolfer.com] which means that their billions in revenues equates to hundreds of millions of dollars.
I tell you what, though. I'm such a nice guy, I'll take the iTunes Media Service off Steve Job's hands and keep supporting only his iPods. I'll start accepting the "loss" and "risk" you seem to associate it with.
There's no way that Lala could have been profitable.
Really? The pricing structure I laid out for you didn't look like it could possibly net some profit?
... or drop $80 million and burn Lala to the ground. I think he made the right choice for his company and the wrong choice for consumers and actual competitive capitalism. Can't blame him but you're a fool if you think he's losing cash on iTMS. I'm not even a businessman and this is painfully obvious to me.
Here, let me help you out with what actually happened. Jobs saw Lala make some innovations like 10 cents to stream a song as much as you like. He got a bunch of consultants to analyze what would happen if iTMS started doing that. And they said that he would still make money but it wouldn't be the drastically high amount he makes because those streamers would opt for that instead of buying the full price song. So he had a choice. Take some undetermined loss by meeting Lala's functionality and compete with them
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That makes no sense.
On the contrary, Lala was doing so great that Apple had to buy it in December for $80 million just so it could shut it off and kill the competition.
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Thank you for this truly entertaining post.
And what if... (Score:2)
someone doesn't want the remaining balance transferred to iTunes? Can they get a cash refund? (I don't use Lala.)
Re:And what if... (Score:5, Informative)
A request for a refund check to Lala must be made prior to May 31, 2010 for a refund.
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That's good to know.
I hope someone mentioned this comment: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1469684&cid=30356016 [slashdot.org]
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You can request a refund check for any unspent money in your account, but you still get an iTunes credit for the web-only songs you purchased... which doesn't help you much if you don't do iTunes.
3 E's (Score:4, Insightful)
Extend
Extinguish
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Re:3 E's (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why has Apple spend $80 million to buy it just so it could kill it three months later?
Re:3 E's (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is always more innovative. (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple has always been more innovative than Microsoft. Their desktop OS has been years ahead of Windows for most of the past decade, and now their malicious business approach is beginning to surpass that of Microsoft's.
Re:3 E's (Score:5, Insightful)
And here Apple has shown once again that they're more efficient than Microsoft: they skipped step 2 entirely.
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By gum, you've sold me. (Throws Win7 PC in trash and goes looking for a cheap Mac.) Damn straight Apple is more efficient than Microsoft. Killed off the competition in mere MONTHS rather than years. ;-)
Not the right meme (Score:4, Insightful)
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish
This gets +5 insightful?
EEE does not mean "buy out your competition." EEE means "subvert and discredit your competition, forcing them out of business."
An EEE strategy in this case would be:
1. Embrace: Announce that iTunes will become a Lala client, with full support for all Lala features
2. Extend: Offer new, proprietary features through iTunes that are not available through the regular Lala website, fostering dependence on iTunes as a Lala client
3. Extinguish: Remove support for Lala from iTunes, leaving all Lala users dependent on iTunes
In an EEE strategy, Lala would not have gotten a dime from Apple. Apple did not EEE Lala, Lala sold out to the man, plain and simple.
Re:Not the right meme (Score:4, Insightful)
This. If anyone is "evil" here it's the owners of Lala. You have this service. Lots of people like your service. You sell your service to a larger competitor, knowing full well they either a) plan to close it down and absorb everything useful, b) will give it half a chance, but in the end will probably shut it down and absorb it. Now the larger competitor is evil when they shut it down and absorb it? Since there was no hostile take over here, there are just a few possible scenarios:
1) Lala was doing well, but the owners wanted more. Apple offered them a large pile of money and they accepted. They knew Apple was planning to shut them down in the near future, and didn't care.
2) Lala was doing well, but the owners wanted more. Apple offered them a large pile of money and they accepted. Apple told them they had six months and X more piles of money to make the business profitable, or they would shut it down and absorb the useful bits. They failed. They probably cared some, but they would have shown it better if they'd just not sold out in the first place.
3) Lala was failing. Apple bought it and propped it up for an extra 6 months while they prepared to absorb it. The owners knew this, but either thought it was worth it to keep the service around as long as they could, or just wanted their parts of the pile of money.
4) Lala was failing. Apple bought it and propped it up for an extra 6 months to give the former owners (now managers) a chance to make it profitable. They failed and now Apple is going to absorb the useful bits.
That's really about it. The various scenarios present different levels of "evil" on the parts of the owners, but in the end they basically boils down to: either the owners sold out, knowing full well they might be signing the services death warrant, or the owners sold out to keep a sinking ship afloat a little longer and hope for a miracle. In either case I seriously doubt Apple bought the service promising on their crossed hearts to keep it running forever regardless of profitability.
Steam (Score:2)
LaLa Hey Hey Kiss It Goodbye
You should get a refund (Score:5, Insightful)
You should get a refund of your money, not have it be transferred to iTunes.
What you agreed to pay for was Lala's service, not iTunes'.
Re:You should get a refund (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently you can get a check if you request it by May 31.
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If you bought the songs before Apple's acquisition, there wasn't any such clause at the time.
Welcome to the real world (Score:2)
When CMP shut down Byte right after I renewed my subscription they didn't send me a check, or even offer me one.
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Yet they were entitled to refund you upon your request.
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What you agreed to pay for was Lala's service, not iTunes'.
I disagree. Suppose you buy a gift card to Joe's Stuff, which is later bought by Bob's Widgets and gets converted to fit in with the rest of the chain. Bob's announces that all the Joe's Stuff gift cards will now be honored at all Bob's locations. Would you really expect to get a cash refund on your gift card, even though it's still being honored at its full face value for comparable products?
You paid Lala for service. Now Apple is letting you use that money to pay them for the same service. I think that's
distressd (Score:2)
Steve jobs as borg (Score:5, Interesting)
Can slashdot
a) create a Steve job version of the Bill Gates borg icon.
b) change the MS icon Ms instead of the Bill Gates borg icon.
I just think it's time.
Re:Steve jobs as borg (Score:5, Insightful)
No NO NO,
The Steve Job Icon needs to be the man on the big screen from the 1984 video.
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No NO NO,
The Steve Job Icon needs to be the man on the big screen from the 1984 video.
With an iPod control interface at the bottom?
rhapsody (Score:2, Interesting)
use rhapsody - as much music as you like for $10 / month. Now works on iphone and ipod
Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reader Dhandforth adds: "10 cent favorites will now cost 9.9x more. What's worse, a community of music fans (followers and followees) will disappear on May 31. Evil. Sigh."
Evil? Evil?
You keep using that word but I don't think you know what it means.
Re:Evil?'There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Evil' (Score:5, Interesting)
(Interview with Notorious Lawyer Jacques Vergès).
'There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Evil'
He has met Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Che Guevara. He defended 'Carlos the Jackal' and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Jacques Vergès, 83, is probably the world's most notorious attorney. His latest client is Khieu Samphan, the former head of state of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, who is on trial for war crimes.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Vergès, are you attracted to evil?
Jacques Vergès: Nature is wild, unpredictable and senselessly gruesome. What distinguishes human beings from animals is the ability to speak on behalf of evil. Crime is a symbol of our freedom.
SPIEGEL: That's a cynical worldview.
Vergès: A realistic one.
SPIEGEL: You have defended some of the worst mass murderers in recent history, and you have been called the "devil's advocate." Why do you feel so drawn to clients like Carlos and Klaus Barbie?
Vergès: I believe that everyone, no matter what he may have done, has the right to a fair trial. The public is always quick to assign the label of "monster." But monsters do not exist, just as there is no such thing as absolute evil. My clients are human beings, people with two eyes, two hands, a gender and emotions. That's what makes them so sinister.
SPIEGEL: What do you mean?
Vergès: What was so shocking about Hitler the "monster" was that he loved his dog so much and kissed the hands of his secretaries -- as we know from the literature of the Third Reich and the film "Der Untergang" ("Downfall"). The interesting thing about my clients is discovering what brings them to do these horrific things. My ambition is to illuminate the path that led them to commit these acts. A good trial is like a Shakespeare play, a work of art.
SPIEGEL: Are there any people whose defense you would not take on out of principle?
Vergès: One of my principles is to have no principles. That's why I would not turn down anyone.
SPIEGEL: Let's say, Adolf Hitler...
Vergès: I would have defended Hitler. I would also accept Osama bin Laden as a client, even (US President) George W. Bush -- as long as he pleads guilty.
SPIEGEL: You can't seriously be mentioning Hitler, Bin Laden and Bush, and their failings, in the same breath.
Vergès: Every crime is unique, and so is every criminal. That alone makes such comparisons impossible.
Re:Evil?'There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Evil' (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I had to google that. Here's the full interview:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,591943,00.html [spiegel.de]
An extraordinarily interesting interview, to say the least. Well worth a full read.
a typical way to beat your competition (Score:2, Informative)
buy it while you can afford to, and then dismantle it..
Just because I'm bitter (Score:2)
Serves you right... (Score:4, Insightful)
If only I could get a refund for my hundreds of web songs :(
Serves you right for paying for a license to listen to music instead of a downloaded file that you keep.
Anyone know of a service that sells downloadable, DRM-free music that you can copy to unlimited computers, burn to CD, back up, and maybe use with iPods?
I think the Amazon music store can do that. I wonder if there are any others....
Your criteria are lacking. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lala was a much better music service, offering songs in straight MP3 format.
If the format is your sole criteria, then you have made a grave mistake. If you meant DRM-free, then you should have said that, but all of the formats Apple offers through iTunes are technically superior to mp3. And the DRM is not tied to the format, meaning, I use the formats Apple uses, but I don't use DRM. And my music library just sounds better than your mp3 library.
The real reason it's bad that Lala is going away is that variety and competition is good, less variety and competition is not as good.
Re:Your criteria are lacking. (Score:5, Insightful)
MP3 can be encoded at levels which achieve transparency - just like any other modern audio codec. While I'm not really up on what encoder and bitrates Lala used for its MP3 offerings, the notion that your music just sounds better than my mp3 library assumes that I am encoding MP3s at below-transparency levels, and that you are encoding your AAC, Ogg, or whatever lossy format at transparency levels, or that you are using a lossless codec and that somehow transparency "isn't enough".
This is incorrect, sir. MP3 as a format choice isn't the sole (or even main) criteria for most people who use it. MP3 is able to achieve transparency, its file sizes are reasonable (LAME encoding at v0 comes to mind), it's compatible with any hardware or software that one will encounter in the real world, and if your friend asks you for a copy of that latest Autechre album, you don't have to pontificate about how your chosen encoding format is better than their chosen encoding format, despite the fact that their software may not support it and their factory-included car CD/MP3 player most certainly won't. A 3% file size decrease with, say, Ogg, simply isn't compelling when it means putting up with the fact that a lot of hardware doesn't support it.
I'm here for the music. Give me transparency, and give me ubiquity. Your claim that you can achieve a better sound at "x" bitrate is not compelling when the file size of MP3 is not obscene, and when both formats can achieve transparency at a reasonable bitrate. Not having to pontificate about audio formats that hardly anyone actually uses? Hell, that's just icing on the cake.
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Please stop spreading that lie. It has been demonstrated to be false. You can encode MP3 a a rate that is undetectable.
It can also encode at a rate that makes is sound like it's coming out of the bottom of a tin can.
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I thought it didn't need to be explained, but in case I was wrong: I am referring solely to audio formats as used by end-users who listen to audio files directly, either on their computer or on other hardware.
I am aware that other codecs for audio are more common for audio/video container formats and media, such as the fact that LPCM, DTS, mp2 and AC3 are audio codecs used in DVDs.
I'm talking about people listening to non-streamed local content that they have ripped or downloaded themselves. To deliberate
MP3 (Score:5, Funny)
> Lala was a much better music service, offering songs in straight MP3 format
Are you calling AAC homosexual?
Lala is dead. Long live Lala. (Score:2)
Role Reversal (Score:2)
Apple still not evil .... (Score:2)
because it just cant.
if a friend of any of us behaved like apple, i wonder how many of us would keep him/her around them
Thanks Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole reason I was using Lala was because my computers (Linux) don't seem to work with iTunes.
Replacing my purchased web songs with an iTunes credit that I can't use doesn't really help me out.
I straight up won't touch iTunes (Score:3)
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Yeah, ok. I'll see your cross-platform MP3 virus with an attack vector that only works when copying files from a Windows machine, and raise you an FSM, two pink unicorns, and a hot chick married to an old man for love.
Goodbye lala - I'm shutting down my account (Score:2)
Straight MP3? (Score:2)
As opposed to "crooked" AAC with better aural quality at lower bitrates, and no DRM? You know AAC is the modern industry standard for audio encoding, don't you? There's nothing about AAC audio files on iTunes that is any more or less encumbered than MP3 audio files from Lala.
Get a grip.
Re:Straight MP3? (Score:5, Insightful)
but for all practical purposes is useless outside of the iTMS walled garden.
What are you talking about? How is it useless? It plays on pretty much every modern software and hardware music player made. It plays on the frickin' Zune. Zen, Archos, Sansa, Sony, even the PSP. Songbird, Mplayer, WMP, and everything else I can think of.
Seriously, back in the day before anyone but Apple used it, it was a valid argument to say you wanted to use the more compatible .mp3 instead of the more efficient .mp4, but now I wonder what you're using that it isn't compatible with.
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The Creative MuVo in my pocket comes to mind. Bought that 2 years ago, works great, it's cheap, has a decent mic for voice notes and a user-replacable battery... It even pops apart for use as a usb stick with it's own little connector built right in. It's a nice little piece of tech.
Now I'm wondering why I now have to replace it by Apple fiat.
Moreover, I wonder why you're so hard to bring people into technology you've chosen as right for *you*. People are well within reason to complain. As technology ex
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Okay, so some commercial players have jumped on the bandwagon (and I doubt mplayer's codecs are technically legal), but MP3 is still more compatible and more common.
And CDDA is more compatible and common yet. What's your point? My car stero plays CDDA exclusively, does that mean companies have a responsibility to sell CDDA forever, or can they drop that line and move to more advanced forms of audio? I have a friend with an 8-track player... you guys should get together and commiserate.
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Still not a good reason to kill off MP3. It's still ubiquitous. It's what all *my* music is in. I want to listen to it on *my* stuff, see?
Is that so unreasonable?
I just 'got' what's up at Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is preparing for Steve's departure. by consolidating their IP and becoming draconian in it's fenced garden. This is very simial to the last time steve started preparing to leave.
I honestly don't see apple surviving long without him at the helm.
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Mod parent up.
This is getting out of hand.
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Yeah, I lost my hair too.
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I just wanted to thank each and every Apple fanboi for supporting this company by overpaying on standard PC parts for YEARS.
Hey man, get with the program - it hasn't been standard PC parts ... they've got a certain je-ne-sais-quoi embedded in each apple branded piece of hardware that gives it crazy-high resale value. (Although other than that, spot on... depending on your definition of standard PC parts - PowerPC?).
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Apple said they were most interested in Lala's billing software.
-l
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If I have a car company, and I buy your smaller car company, I can merge your product into mine and remove the competition, thereby increasing my profits.
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Now I might be missing something, but what did they gain through this acquisition? Why buy a one of the many competitors.. I mean yes it was a great service but there are others out there as well... I just don't get Apples gain from this purchase in the first place...
By all accounts LaLa was one of the best services out there--perhaps one of the few that could give iTunes a real run for its money (indeed, everything I've heard says it was a better service than Apple's itunes).
That's now one less competitor
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Having two services is pointless one had to go and I have a feeling iTunes is kinda bigger..
Unless the two services target different markets.
iTunes is there to support iPods, iPhones, and iPads on on Mac or Windows computers.
Lala seemed to be working with any moderately recent browser, to allow online streaming of music and purchase of individual MP3 files.
iTunes may be bigger, but I don't fit into that market, since the required software doesn't run on my computer.
Re:Why does anyone use iTunes? (Score:5, Informative)
Apart from the 'cool' factor, why do people use Apple's locked down crap?
Apple hasn't sold DRMd music for a couple of years now.
Video through iTunes is still DRMd, but so is Amazon video.
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Apple hasn't sold DRMd music for a couple of years now.
No, but they still want me to pay [a total of] $100 to get non-DRM versions of the music that I already bought and own...
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They wanted DRM free from the start - it was a stated goal of Apple's that there be no DRM. Remember the "Rip, Mix, Burn" adverts? Their extension of that was to be able to buy music online as well as rip it from your CDs.
However, they had no choice - the labels had the content and would not allow it to be sold without DRM, so they had to add it. They made it as weak as they could get away with, and even included the ability to burn your tracks to Audio CD, stripping off the DRM.
In their later negotiations
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Um, Jobs was the first music industry figure to call for DRM-free music. Charging 30 cents is required to pay the labels. Do you think the labels would be fine letting you redownload a DRM track DRM-free? On the other hand, what motivation does Apple have to charge you to do so? They make very little money on their Music Store. The purpose of the store is to add value to the iPod (and there's little doubt that this has worked very well for them).
My point? Just because Apple now sells DRM-free music doesn't mean Apple is anti-DRM.
Not a single person said they were. They are anti-DRM with reg
Three reasons why people use iTunes (Score:2)
2. iPhone
3. Windows Media Player
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. Just checked, they are no longer selling web songs. So it's just $0.89 MP3s until 5/31.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As long as its not a monopoly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not every day, but it does seem to be increasing every week, or perhaps just every month.
Consider that it may be due to changed circumstances. A few years ago when Apple acted evil, it only affected those who were committed to it...often idealistically committed. These days it is having a much bigger impact on the average user. So it's more significant when they do something evil.
If you ever though that Apple was a good company, you just weren't paying attention. This was safe, as there was a large spac