Apple recently organized its upcoming purchase of Lala, a music streaming and download website. Lala currently gives users the option to download music for 89 cents, or buy a streamed-only version of a song for only ten cents.
This could carry a number of interesting implications for Apple's extremely popular music application, iTunes. Nothing is definite yet, but here are some things iTunes users could be seeing in the near future:
1. Cheaper songs, streaming options. Hey, we can hope. It's not like iTunes songs are expensive now, but it certainly wouldn't bother any of us customers if Apple lowered their prices. And streaming would be great, too–I know there are certain songs that I like to listen to occasionally, so I'd be willing to pay a cheaper price to stream them every so often.
2. Full song previews. Apparently Lala allows users to hear full song previews before buying, in contrast to Apple, which only gives us 30-second previews. Sometimes 30 seconds simply isn't enough time to hear a song. I'd certainly be happy with longer song previews.
3. Genius radio. Apple's Genius feature in iTunes (which I personally have not used very much) recommends new songs based on your iTunes library. But if Apple added streaming to Genius, Genius would suddenly turn into a formidable challenge to Pandora. And Pandora has recently put a limit on how many free hours of music users can listen to. If Genius were more generous than Pandora, then Pandora had better watch out.
Of course, this is all pure speculation. But I do think it's safe to say that Apple's acquisition of Lala will change something regarding iTunes and the way Apple handles music.
Via PC World.
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