Apple has acquired digital music service Lala.
iTunes is the leading music service in the United States with more than 70 percent of all digital music sales and it is the leading music retailer overall. The iTunes store offers more than 11 million songs. They have decided to purchase Lala in an attempt to explore new models for selling songs.
Newer music streaming services from the likes of News Corp's MySpace Music and Spotify have begun to win over music fans in the last year, which has given Apple the incentive to expand further. The Lala service allows users to stream from the Internet any tune in its catalog of more than 8 million songs once for free, and then sells unlimited streams for 10 cents per track and MP3 downloads starting at 79 cents.
Lala founder Bill Nguyen said in October his company's revenues total less than $10 million. He said the company had about 100,000 customers. Google have also recently partnered with Lala, who provide users song samples along with links to purchase the music. Lala has also partnered with Facebook to offer music through the social networking site.
"Apple recognizes that the model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level," Apple Representative.
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