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."
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.
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Informative)
Apple said they were most interested in Lala's billing software.
-l
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.
Re:You should get a refund (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently you can get a check if you request it by May 31.
a typical way to beat your competition (Score:2, Informative)
buy it while you can afford to, and then dismantle it..
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.
Re:Antitrust? (Score:3, Informative)
As long as its not a monopoly.
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:2, Informative)
You can also bet that non-compete clauses are unenforceable in California.
True in many cases, but California law makes exceptions in the case of business ownership exchanges. Here's some info [lawzilla.com] on it.
Re:Your criteria are lacking. (Score:3, Informative)
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 deliberately misunderstand that is unhelpful.
Re:While I personally didn't use the service... (Score:2, Informative)
I think you have just bought into the hype.
Actual evidence [xciv.org] shows that AAC sucks at 128K, and MP3 does much better in many cases.
With AAC you need at least 256K to get acceptable output.
Neither is the end-all be-all of music formats. You should be allowed to select the format for each song that sounds best.