Apple may acquire a company called Lala and apply changes to iTunes.  Lala is a “music streaming service” that allows users to buy streams of music for 10 cents.  Payment for music streams is a downpayment for downloading the song.  Lala sells “pre-paid chunks of music credits” instead of individual songs.  Apple is especially interested in Lala because of its payment system, which could save Apple millions of dollars a year by cutting down on credit card transaction costs.  The Lala purchase may also help increase iTunes’ revenue: in 2007, an average iTunes user had only bought 22 songs, while an average Lala user had spent $67 on music.  Lala stores music online (“cloud servers”), and users can play songs through any device connected to the internet.  This enables Apple to move its music from being stored locally on iPod hard drives to cloud-based, which essentially means that more data can be stored.

Well, I hadn’t heard of Lala before this article, but I think that it could definitely bring about good changes for Apple and iTunes users. Lower costs and higher revenue is great for any company.  The article said that the Lala purchase will be the first major step forward for iTunes since it was created in 2003; I think it’s good that Apple is considering new features for iTunes.  As an iTunes user, I think it would be awesome to have cloud-based music storage and to be able to play my music from anything on the internet.  Sometimes when I’m at work in the newsroom I wish I could have my personal iTunes account on my computer in there.  Listening to my iPod isn’t really an option for me because I need to be able to hear what’s going on at work in case anyone has problems or needs my help.  Usually I resort to Pandora, but that’s not always as fun because you can’t demand that a specific song is played, and you can’t repeat it.  Also, cheaper music is never a bad thing!  I was kind of bummed when iTunes increased their pricing system this year from $0.99 to $1.29 for some songs/artists.  Not that that’s a huge price increase, but I tend to buy a lot of music and it starts adding up quickly.

Source: Wired.com