The news came forth yesterday that Apple was purchasing streaming audio site Lala. Lala, for those who may not know, is a music streaming website that allow users to create playlists of their favorite artists and songs, and even purchase mp3 versions of the songs that they really wish to keep. Why would Apple decide to purchase Lala?
There is one key feature that I believe is the reason why Apple would decide to purchase Lala–the data. Yes, the listening habits of all of the users of a streaming music service can do wonders for Apple’s Genius playlist feature. Yes, the listening habits of the iTunes users
while their at home is quite useful; just think of the additional data that Apple can receive from the users who use Lala for listening to their music while they’re at work.
Along with Genius playlist knowledge, the agreements that Lala has with the recording industry is probably a very lucrative item that Apple would like to acquire in order to give them more leverage to allow full streaming of every song through the iTunes interface.
The final reason Apple would possibly want to purchase Lala is to begin its foray into streaming music in order to keep them relative in the field with other streaming applications like Pandora or Last.fm.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as though Apple is making a good move by purchasing a streaming audio company instead of building their own. Not that Apple couldn’t do it, but sometimes it’s just easier and quicker to purchase the technology than to build it by your own.
