Five months ago Apple bought the online music-streaming site Lala, in a move some read as a sign that Apple was moving away from the iTunes model for selling music and toward a subscription-based model. Today, Lala announced that it is shutting down at the end of the month.
It's unclear what the shutdown means. Apple could be planning to roll Lala's streaming capacities into a future version of iTunes, or it could have simply bought out then killed a site it viewed as a likely competitor. Either way, the move won't be popular with Lala users. The site was quickly emerging as the default source of streaming music, having been embraced by the most reputable music blogs and websites.
Regardless of whether Apple embraces streaming music or tries to crush it, as it has with Flash, it seems likely that a new, web-based version of iTunes will launch soon. Pundits predict the iTunes will allow users to access their iTunes media library remotely through any computer.
