More on Apple, LaLa and the future of iTunes

I have a theory about where apple could be going with this streaming service, and the new server farm, and it has to do with the iphone. With the Iphone, Apple essentially created a new operating system in a simple form that was easily adoptable. With each new update, the OS becomes more and more fully featured.
Apple could easily begin to upgrade the MobileMe service to include a form of itunes-like service. This could be similar to what google is doing with it's web-based OS. With the Introduction of a tablet (with presumably, a larger, more feature-rich version of the iphone interface), Apple could introduce a service that stores everything in the "cloud." It could be accessed as easily as the web-apps at mobileme.com work right now.
This would essentially eliminate the need for most consumers to have an additional PC and a touch-screen phone or tablet. In addition, the relatively inexpensive, and easily replaceable devices would all be safely backed up to the internet, so you can swap them easily, much like you can with the iphone now.

I don't think a lot of people fully understand Lala's business model. I wish I was a part of TUAW's blogging team for just this one point, cause I think it has the possibility to revolutionize music at Apple. From their FAQ:
"Listen to songs in full before you buy. Get unlimited plays of a song on the web for 10 cents, or the MP3 download for 79 cents more. All the MP3s are DRM-free, compatible with iTunes and Windows Media Player."

So, yes, it's streaming (so quick to boohoo streaming) but this allows for a sort of "unlimited streaming" for free in the sense that you can listen to an unlimited number of songs one full playthrough each. Apple would simply swap in an iTunes download for when you want to have a "hard" copy on your hard drive or iPod. Apple could probably adopt a similar model with per song stream licenses available for purchase. What's going to be their real money maker in this situation is that this streaming model with a full playthrough once allows Apple's Genius recommendation system to effectively become Pandora. This is huge and probably the biggest thing to take away from this.

I disagree with the point that Lala's pricing scheme goes against Apple's own your music philosophy. Yes, there's streaming, but it's a per song price for streaming. You're not paying for a subscription that stops when you stop paying the monthly fee. You paid for that song only once and it's yours to stream forever. Just think of it like you did download it and you do "own" the song, but you downloaded it their servers and they serve it up to you whenever you want it from that point onwards. Also if Apple can swing the full playthrough on first listen (i.e. convince the labels), I think there's a chance people who actually are calling for an unlimited subscription service from Apple will see that what they can get for free will suffice quite nicely.

My podcast topic would be: "Why 2009 Won't Suck Worse!"

The AT&T network will completely melt down unless this is going to be wifi only.

AT&T is already complaining that iPhone users are eating up bandwidth on their network. Can you imagine what would happen once streaming is allowed?

Unlike mp3.com, I assume Apple will be able to negotiate a deal with the labels to let users stream music. I'm guessing this will be music purchased from iTMS, not just any MP3 you've got on your hard drive, though. Maybe with a monthly plan, or a small charge in addition to the purchase price of a track.

My wife and I were talking about this at lunch today, when we were talking about a song that we had in iTunes, but not on any of the devices with us. Wouldn't it be nice if we could stream anything we had in iTunes at home?

I used a similar, short-lived service about ten years ago. It was part of the long-gone mp3.com. You downloaded a small application that would scan audio CDs placed in your CD-ROM to determine that you owned the title, and provided that the album had been ripped into their system, you could log in and stream it from any broadband-connected computer. This was a time when the major labels were highly suspicious of ANY electronic distribution of music, so the service didn't last long.

It seems like an easier route for Apple would be to buy a service like Orb, which allows you to stream all your media directly from your computer to another device.

As long as they leave the traditional purchase modelas an option because I amine of the customers of Apple who want to 'own' a copy of the music digitally.