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Lala media has posted to their website and sent emails to members of their service that the site and service will be discontinued on May 31 of 2010, giving speculators the assumption that their now parent company, Apple, has plans to use the acquired group to add streaming services to iTunes.

Currently Showcased On Lala Website

If you are unfamiliar with the Lala service, the group is a five-year-old startup company who offered the ability to stream a vast array of musical content over an IP (Internet Protocol). The group's musical catalog contained a little over seven million songs in which users could stream any one of the content chosen, much in likeness to Internet radio. The web software also gave users the ability to purchase the rights to a selected song for $.10 and allowed the user to stream the given content on demand an unlimited amount of times. To permanently download the song to the user’s storage, the content would reach in the range of traditional music purchases as seen on iTunes or other music purchasing mediums.

Email Lala Sent To Users

It's been the speculation of observers that Apple is planning to incorporate a cloud-based service into iTunes allowing users to stream music along with the rest of Apple's iTunes content catalog. However, delving deeper into the situation, industry resources are saying that a move like from Apple wouldn't be immediate given the nature of the record labels

Sources tell me that in the past few weeks, Apple has started signaling to the labels that it’s interested in a Web-based version of iTunes, its dominant music retail platform. But those conversations are preliminary at best.

Music label execs have not accepted Apple's idea to develop a cloud-based technology into the iTunes software. With the tech implemented, users can stream content from Apple's iTunes media library anywhere in the world on demand, making their multimedia content stateless with the option to download the content to their system's storage if they choose. However, the majority of the music industry believes that they should have a bigger share of the revenues and more pricing power, a notion that both Apple and users of the iTunes software would more than likely not fully appreciate.

People have given an angle for argument for Apple to pursue in order to help them implant the cloud-computing technology into their iTunes software. One widely agreed argument shared among consumers and experts is that Apple could imply that people have the legal and natural right to stream content they have purchased anywhere, anytime and anyway they see fit. However, it has been also mentioned that such debate could hinder Apple's interests into bettering deals for benefit of the consumer in other forms of multimedia content they have business in, such as with television networks and motion picture studios.

Experts, both technological and financial, have stated that the utilization of cloud-computing in iTunes will undoubtedly take the software to higher levels and more than likely increase it's dominance as the premier vendor to purchase digital multimedia content.

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