Apple shuts down Lala

This report from Wired just makes me mad:

Apple Kills Lala Music Service

• By Eliot Van Buskirk  
• April 30, 2010  |  
• 12:43 pm  |  
• Categories: Media, Social Media

Lala users were greeted with this banner image, atop a note about what will happen to their music collections and existing credits.

Apple closed down the cloud-based Lala music service Friday for reasons unknown, after acquiring it in December. Lala members can still access their online collections, but only until May 31, when Apple will take the service offline completely.

When that happens, all the web-based music purchased by Lala members will become unplayable. Unused music credits, which Lala users bought in chunks in order to redeem multiple songs, will become unredeemable. Any MP3s purchased and downloaded from the service will of course continue to play, but this represents a blow to early adopters of Lala’s streaming songs, which only cost 10 cents.

“In appreciation of your support,” reads a note on Lala.com that is only accessible to members, “you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store.”

A really good product, purchased and killed.  I've used it a lot for this blog, but no more.

Bad move.