It was reported on the 7th of December that Apple bought Lala. With this move, Apple enters the streaming business and is getting their feet wet with cloud services. I think this has to do more with the trend toward streaming of music and Spotify coming early 2010 to USA, than any other thing. But what is Lala?

Lala is a music streaming service that lets you play music over your web browser. The only thing you need is an account. Also, you can upload and share your music collection, while having it available from anywhere. How does Lala make money? Well, you can buy unlimited web plays of a song for 10 cents, or just buy a download starting at 79 cents.

Lala is interesting to Apple for technical competence of the team, for the platform, which could be integrated with the iTunes Store (not just for music) and the Google deal. All this helps them prepare is case Spotify is successful, when they come to the USA early 2010.

What is the big deal with Spotify, you may ask, or even what is Spotify?

Spotify is a Swedish company that provide a service of streaming of music for free. You download the client and you have access to millions of songs without paying a cent. In exchange you have to listen to a occasional advertisement. but that is not a problem because, is much much less the an radio and TV. The killer feature of Spotify is the playlists: can create as many as you like and share them. If you don’t to listen to ads you can pay around 10 euros a month and you get to listen to your playlist online. Plus you can listen and download the playlist to a iPhone, Android or selected Nokia phone.

The usability design of the client is very similar to iTunes, so if you switch to Spotify the transition is seamless. Add to this that it looks like the iPhone app rocks.

As you can see Spotify is a threat to Apple music business, because you can have a huge catalog of music at your hands, with the same experience as you have it in your computer. Meaning that Spotify can become the window from which you access music, not iTunes and that is not good for Apple’s business.

Spotify is Awsome, iTunes a commodity and Lala just became the wildcard.

A week ago, I was waiting for the metro (or tunnelbana) on the  T-Centralen of Stockholm. It was around 11:20 pm on a Tuesday night. There, I could listen the echoes of percussion and strings. When I got closer I saw four teenagers playing a guitar, some drums and signing. The few people around where enjoying the show and music. I even shut down my mp3 player to listen to their “covers” of popular songs and feel the rhythms of the drums. When they finished with a song, the people around will applauded, a was a very fulfilling seen.

Things changed when the “security” came, you see the metro police or “ORDNINGSMAKT” are generally dressed in red. They are always around in public transportation to control any disturbances or drunks (very common on weekends). The thing that strike me the most, was that four members of the ORDNINGSMAKT (which the smallest was around 1.82 meter tall and around 90 Kg) came down to put a end to the 4 teens playing. The teens where at most 50 kg, this is passive bullying. When teens saw the first guard, they  started to pack. The image of four big men with the red uniforms around the kids, was priceless.

Yeah there is the rule that this kind of behaviors is not accepted and is worst when performers ask for money. However these kids were not asking for money, they were doing it for pleasure, for fun. The metro is full of art on the walls, “some saying is the biggest art exposition on the world”. Why not permit vocational performers in non rush ours to delight the passengers and add to the “art exposition”. Like I guy told me that night, what else can you expect, this is Sweden.

Stockholm metro has a history of problems with graffiti, if they had to chose between performances or graffiti, I bet they will go for the performances.

There is a time when policies should be reviewed and I never thought about until I saw what I saw. Is Interesting how we overlook some regulations since “its the way is been for a long time”. I wonder how many of our habits need are overlook, because we fail to see into the mirror critically and constructively.