Apple Strikes Deal to Buy the Music Start-Up Lala
SAN FRANCISCO — In the most recent sign that Apple is looking at alternative ways for people to store and play their digital music, the company has agreed to buy Lala, a four-year-old start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., a person with knowledge of the deal said Friday.
Context & Ripple Effects
Lala had already shown its model in March with an iPhone app that streamed a listener’s music library from the cloud. Apple’s reported discussions with the service earlier on December 4 have become an agreed acquisition, placing that alternative storage-and-play approach inside Apple.
The deal matters because it gives Apple a music-service capability beyond the download transaction, rather than merely another catalog or device feature.
First-order effects
- Apple gains Lala’s cloud-based music-service capability and the company behind it, while Lala’s product direction moves under Apple’s control.
Second-order effects
- Apple can use Lala’s approach to test how cloud access fits alongside its existing digital-music offering, making service design—not only music purchases—a more important part of its music strategy.
Third-order effects
- If Apple integrates Lala’s model into its broader music business, the acquisition supports a shift from files tied to individual devices toward music services organized around remote libraries and playback access.
The trend: Digital-music companies are using acquisitions to add cloud-service capabilities as listening shifts beyond device-bound libraries.