If seemingly imminent plans by Apple to buy a small online music specialist from California go ahead, it could signal the end of music downloading as we know it.
The apparently solid rumours that Jobs and co. are set to snap up Lala, a cloud-storage music website, suggests that Apple is either looking to add streaming music to iTunes or build something even more innovative.
No offline tracks
Lala's ability to make entire music collections available from the cloud obviates the need for users to keep downloaded copies offline on any of their own media, whether that's a portable player or a computer hard drive.
Should iTunes eventually morph into a music library in the sky, as many observers are speculating, then both downloads and music copying could disappear.
What's left?
After all, when companies like Apple are merely selling the right to listen to music stored remotely on hardware with permission to access it, then there won't be a lot left to copy.
Your comments (7) Click to add a new comment
steve3003
December 7th 2009
7. Really good for air travellers, subway users etc! What sort of BDM thought this one up? No doubt CD publishers will be pleased though.
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d4lien
December 7th 2009
6. Hooray! The faceless corporations find an even better way to milk us for cash... Everyone will have to up their download limit plans and pump further cash into the fat cat pockets.
Personally though I don't see this happening any time soon.
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iveoles
December 6th 2009
5. Spotify already offer this to the UK. It's more likely they'll buy them and sit on the tech.
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stu531
December 6th 2009
4. Pretty poor idea. The idea of ownership becomes even more remote. It's even less tangible than a download.
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hss1
December 5th 2009
3. Don't think this will happen anytime soon in the UK, we have serously slow internet access compared to other countries max 50MB for £40 per month now compare this with Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, japan 1Gbps for just £15 per month!!!!!!!
BT plans to go 50Mbps in 2020 by then other countries will have 10Gbps
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lovlid
December 5th 2009
2. "Should iTunes eventually morph into a music library in the sky, as many observers are speculating, then both downloads and music copying could disappear."
Just on itunes, right? Your not suggesting that this is a Godlike move that everyone else would follow, are you?
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madjedi
December 5th 2009
1. That's a terrible idea. I would need a constant Internet connection to listen to music. For one thing most of the time I can't get a 3g connection because of O2s bad network. Also I want to have music I have paid for on my possesion not in the cloud where it could be taken away at any moment on the whim of some jobs worth apple exec!
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