Apple In Talks to Acquire Lala Music Service?

Apple is reportedly in talks to acquire the Lala online music service, according to Bloomberg.

Two of their sources have revealed that talks between the companies are in progress. Investors in Lala include Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures and Ignition Partners in Bellevue, Washington.

Lala lets you listen to any song on the site one time for free. You can then pay 10 cents to listen to the song unlimited times on the web. The music stays on Lala's servers rather then be downloaded onto your computer.

“There’s a big question in the industry about what will be the dominant way people will obtain music, whether it’s stored in the cloud or whether it will be on a hard drive,” said Larry Kenswil, an attorney at Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles who earlier headed Universal Music Group’s digital unit. “Apple is wise to cover its bases because it’s only in the download business.”

Google recently partnered with Lala so that when you search for music in Google you are able to listen to an audio preview of the song directly from Lala.

It has been speculated for some time that Apple is investigating a subscription model for iTunes. Perhaps the acquisition of Lala may be a step in this direction.

Read More