Lala music streaming service shutdown by Apple

Apple have officially shut down the Lala music streaming service that it acquired at the beginning of the year, just like the company said it would. Visitors to Lala.com will now see a message that says, “The Lala service has been discontinued as of May 31st, 2010.”

Many Lala users will surely be concerned at this news wondering what will happen to the money they have spent on songs and other services from the Lala site.

It turns out you won’t be cutting your losses and that Apple are actually providing a decent deal. All the money users have spent on Lala will be refunded in full in the form of an iTunes Store credit code sent via e-mail. Apple has said that it will round refunds under $10 up to the nearest $1 and refunds of more than $10 to the nearest $5 the same will apply for UK users.

So now that Apple have finally made the announcement that Lala has been shut down, what, if anything, will replace it?

Apple didn’t spend $80 million on the service just to close it down and be done with it surely. The Wall Street Journal was told by “people familiar with the matter” that Apple will launch its own version of Lala’s unique music library hosting service.

If the WSJ’s sources are correct, users will be able to upload their iTunes library to Apple’s servers so that the entire music library can be accessed on other computers or a mobile device like an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, as long as you have Internet access.

According to online Social Media guide Mashable:

“The mobile aspect seems the most likely component of Apple’s post-Lala plan, given that the ability to combine streaming music from the Internet with other tasks is one of the major pillars of the recently-announced iPhone OS 4.0.”

Next week’s much anticipated WWDC event to be held by Apple should provide more information on their future plans for Lala, watch this space.

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