The news broke today that LaLa was shutting down. I have been a loyal LaLa user for a long time and have invested several hundred dollars so I could play the music I wanted to listen to online. I knew Apple had purchased them. I suspected this would happen, but I assumed existing commitments would be honored.
Apple is going to give me credit at the iTunes store. First, LaLa did not allow the download of a song, but gave you access for 10 cents. Apple wants to sell you the song for $1+. I do not want to have 1/10 the number of songs on one computer. At the very least, the appropriate thing to do would be to credit my credit card, not my iTunes account. I already have thousands of songs I purchased through iTunes. What I wanted was to be able to play my music from any computer connected to the Internet. This is what I paid for.
So, what is the lesson. Is it you can’t trust online companies to provide the service users pay for? Clearly some companies go out of business and can no longer honor their commitments. This is not the same thing. It looks like you get a better deal and commitments you have made no longer matter.
It has been a tough week for those who make a commitment to online services. First, Ning discontinued the free service it provided stranding those who had used this service to offer large amounts of user created content. OK, so users did not put any money into this company and maybe you get what you pay for. This situation with LaLa is a little different.
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