Regardless of the merits of Lala's service, I highly doubt that the biggest music retailer in the U.S. had a reason to be afraid of any competition from them. Certainly not reason enough to be forced to buy them. Apple are infamously frugal when it comes to M&A, so this must be either "buying technology" or "buying talent". I guess we'll see which once the iTunes "cloud" service is launched.
