To: [removed]
Reply-To: “Lala” <noreply@lala.com>
From: This sender is DomainKeys verified “Lala” <noreply@lala.com> 
Subject: Lala will be discontinued as of May 31, 2010
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:23:58 +0000

This is an automated message. Please do not reply.

Dear [name removed],

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

©2005-2010 la la media, inc. All rights reserved.

Lala was a really great service, I will miss it.

I started using Lala just a few days before Apple bought them out and was very impressed how well it all worked. 

While I still have reservations about storing my data in the cloud and I still want to own and not rent my music, I also can see a lot of advantages if my iTunes library resided in the cloud and was easily accessible to any Internet-enabled device.

Here’s hoping that Apple leverages Lala’s technologies to provide users something very useful in the comng months.

My aging iBook had become a permanent component in my living room a/v system to take advantage of Lala. Just this week I started to use Lala to introduce my 3-year-old daughter to orchestral music. Even if it is reborn as iTunes.com, I’m willing to bet the best features that differentiated Lala will be gone - specifically, 10-cent web songs and the abillity to play any song all the way through one time. (My biggest question is whether Apple will allow “cloud” storage of music not purchased from iTunes.)

On the other hand, I can see that if everyone else was using Lala the way I was (mostly web songs and free listening), there wasn’t much potential for profit.