Apple Adding Subscription Service To iTunes?

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One key difference between iTunes and other online music stores is that Apple’s iTunes have always allowed customers to buy and own their own music. Almost all other popular online services have offered a monthly subscription plan offering unlimited music, and iTunes may be heading down that path as they are in talks to purchase Lala.com.

Website Lala.com lets users listen to any song only once, then gives them the option to purchase it for $0.10, the catch being you can’t download it or play it on any mobile device. Music purchased through Lala.com simply streams off the web on your computer, or possibly a MID. Lala has a large library of 8 million songs, by comparison, iTunes sells 11 million songs in its online store.

Lala started as a service that let people trade music with each other. When the music industry sent their lawyers, the site reformed into its current model. If Apple purchases Lala, it may soon offer a subscription-based model on iTunes, or, perhaps, Lala would be integrated into streaming music on an iPhone or iPod Touch, where users are limited by the space of their local drives.

It remains to be seen what will happen. While the Lala purchase could be good for Apple and their users, Google’s music search features uses Lala for its results, and a change in what it provides could hamper Google’s music search features.