A few months ago, when Apple bought Lala.com, I didn’t panic. I thought Apple’d integrate Lala.com’s store into iTunes, rebrand the site, and keep things rolling.
I was wrong:
Dear Ron T.,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.
That’s part of the message I got in my inbox this morning. Apple’s shutting Lala.com down, and offering me “credit” in the iTunes store as compensation.
Fuck you, Apple. I bought music from Lala.com because I didn’t want to buy it from your store. I had a choice, and I exercised it. But you just can’t understand that, can you?
I will never buy anything from the iTunes store. I will never throw my money away on songs in your proprietary format.
Lala.com’s ease of use, free access to every song in the catalog, cheap prices and web-based portability were far superior to the iTunes store. You couldn’t compete with that, could you, Apple? So you bought it and killed it.
Fuck you.
