We’re getting some very strange and surprising news, apparently Apple would be “very close” to acquire Lala. It’s still a rumor but CNET claims to have some reliable sources confirming it.

For those of you who don’t know about Lala it’s a music streaming service that lets you for example buy songs for $.10 and listen to them without actually owning them (I’ll call that a stream). They got a lot of coverage lately because of their iPhone app that was supposed to bring this to the iPhone but we’ve been awaiting it since a couple weeks already and it still didn’t show up.

I would actually enjoy being able to buy “a stream” from iTunes for a dime and then having the option of actually owning the mp3 for a dollar. However according to CNET Apple would be actually interested in some of Lala’s technical knowledge, and in particular :

a payment and fulfillment system that could save Apple millions of dollars a year

It’s pretty much all we know for now and we’ll keep you updated if something new comes up.

Would you enjoy buying “streams” for a dime out of iTunes?

[Update :

The news has been confirmed by the NYTimes and the WSJ but unfortunately Apple refused to comment:

Apple buys smaller technology companies all the time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.

In their opinion Apple would be mainly interested in holding music in the cloud actually.

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