Apple's Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical
This is a guest post from Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business. He is the founder and former CEO of digital music pioneer MP3.com. He is currently the CEO of music locker company MP3tunes.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here is short but pointed: Lala shipped an iPhone app that streams a user's library from the cloud back in March 2009, and by December Bloomberg had Apple in talks to buy the service. Michael Robertson — writing as CEO of rival locker MP3tunes after founding MP3.com — is arguing that the talks point at something bigger than a talent deal: that Apple's unconfirmed cloud music strategy runs through Lala's streaming infrastructure.
The framing matters because of who it comes from. Robertson has spent years running a cloud music locker, so his claim is both an insider read on where downloads are heading and a warning from someone whose own product sits squarely in Apple's path. The strategy itself remains rumored — neither Apple nor Lala has confirmed a deal or a cloud plan.
First-order effects
- Lala becomes an acquisition target whose value is its working cloud-streaming stack — the same capability demonstrated in its March 2009 iPhone app — rather than its standalone user base.
- Independent locker operators like Robertson's MP3tunes face direct competitive risk if Apple enters cloud music with device-level distribution they cannot match.
Second-order effects
- A confirmed Apple move into streaming lockers would force Amazon and Google to accelerate their own cloud music plans, turning storage-and-streaming rights into the next licensing battleground with the major labels.
- Labels gain a second negotiation front: any Apple cloud service needs streaming or locker licenses, shifting leverage away from the per-track download economics Apple helped establish.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, digital music ownership migrates from files users hold to licensed cloud libraries controlled by platform companies — with specialists like Lala and MP3tunes absorbed into or squeezed out by hardware-and-store ecosystems.
The trend: Digital music is shifting from downloaded file ownership toward platform-operated cloud lockers, and the race to acquire streaming-capable specialists like Lala is the visible edge of that migration.