Palo Alto,
Calif. – Despite speculation that
Apple (NASD: AAPL) acquired streaming music service Lala so that it could launch a
subscription plan alongside outright sales at its iTunes Store, digital music
veteran Michael Robertson postulated in a guest post on TechCrunch that the company
is actually planning a cloud-based service. Among Lala’s assets is a personal
storage service, which loads a user’s personal music library into an online
locker, so that users can stream their collection from any Web-connected
device.
"This technology plus the engineering and management team is the
true value of Lala to Apple," Robertson said.
Such a service would allow
Apple to expand the iTunes software for its more than 100 million users without
having to pay additional streaming licensing fees.
"Because users are in
possession of the materials no new licenses are required from the record labels
or publishers," Robertson added.
"Record labels are wary to give
Apple even greater dominance which is why Apple’s new strategy is designed to
sidestep new licenses from the major labels."
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(TechCrunch)
