Apple Spikes Lala

Their name was LaLa and their slogan was “Where the music plays.”

But May 31 is the day the music will die for a few million users  have enjoyed the stream internet music site. They were informed of this in a stark message this morning when they visited the site, which could easily have been considered a small but viable competitor to iTunes, where you have to download the music rather than just enjoy it on the internet.

Apple bought Lala back in December for $85 million. At the time, many people speculated that Apple would incorporate a streaming component into iTunes, a feature that most customers would embrace.

This still may happen. Apple is about a transparent on these matters as a lead wall at a bomb testing site.

More likely, Lala is a sacrificial pawn in an elaborate chess game that has been going on between Apple Computer and Google over the future of music distribution. Google was courting Lala when Apple uped the offer price and bought it.

It was one of the clearest indications that the historic alliance between Silicon Valley’s two most popular giants had deteriorated into blood rivalry.

Google’s new music service had been using Lala to let users search for millions of songs and now the future of this popular service is uncertain, if not downright dubious. Apple’s terse announcement, did not deal with such details. It only stated that paying Lala customers would get iTunes credits as compensation.

Last Friday, a police SWAT team, that is advised by Apple, broke down the door of a Gizmodo editor. This Friday, it announces the silencing of Lala. Traditional PR people will confirm that this is the traditional time to announce bad or unpopular news because it is the time of lowest viewership/readership.

This fact may also be true in social media as well.

I only shudder to guess what Apple may have in store for us on future Fridays.