

Ask HN: Lala Land Grab? - gfodor

I just had a thought. Apple bought Lala, and I've spent probably about $50-$100 on Lala for music. This is a pretty big music library since albums are so cheap. I've gotten in the flow of listening to Lala every day and I'm always adding more music. I love it.<p>Now, the speculation is that Apple is going to turn Lala into a streaming iTunes product. Knowing Apple's iTunes price points, I'm <i>very</i> skeptical that they will keep the prices where they are on Lala. With the inevitable iPhone app, Apple is surely going to position the iTunes streaming service as just as good, if not better than buying the music as it is now. To see them then offer a 10x price cut over buying the track in full would just cannibalize the iTunes store.<p>It seems clear Apple will be stuck grandfathering in everyone's Lala collection, otherwise they'll alienate all current Lala users from iTunes (myself included.) Nevermind the horrible press they'd get if suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars of music is ripped from the hands of Lala users. But, they are going to almost certainly have higher prices for future purchases than Lala has now.<p>My conclusion: it might be time to buy as much cheap Lala music as you can until they can launch the iTunes streaming service. Worst case, you're out $100 or whatever you want to blow. (If its any consolation, if you lose this money because Apple screws everyone over, Apple will probably go down with you!) Best case, you end up with a nice music library you can listen to anywhere that will go up in value tenfold in a few weeks.<p>Also, if you haven't uploaded your music collection to Lala, you should probably do it now. I'd be shocked if Apple grandfathers in uploaded tracks too, but who knows!
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johns
I think a more likely scenario is they shut it down, give everyone iTunes
store credit for the amount they spent on streaming-only songs and if you
bought MP3s, you're OK since they don't have DRM. Sounds like a much cheaper
solution than trying to run the service. They bought it for the talent, why
would they waste that talent maintaining the existing site instead of building
something new? Also, lala's contracts with the record companies aren't
transferable and there's no way Apple can negotiate the same terms. The record
companies don't want iTunes to dominate the market, it's bad for them.

I'm a heavy lala user and LOVE the service, but spend your money elsewhere.

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gfodor
Perhaps, but even this will result in a huge backlash. Today I have 50-100
albums I can listen to anywhere, and Apple is going to take those away from me
and say "Oh, but you can now have 10"? Somehow I don't think this will fly.

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danudey
The beautiful thing about shutting down a service is that you don't have to
worry about losing clients.

~~~
Frazzydee
It's still not the best way of attracting the existing user base to your new
replacement service.

