Billboard
Apple Inc. has purchased online music retailer Lala.com, a Silicon Valley start-up that has threatened “the end of the MP3” with its fast song-streaming application. Lala has developed an application — not yet available to the public — that allows users to buy the right to stream songs from a digital locker for an unlimited time on their iPhones for 10 cents each. The song quality is lower than what Apple’s iTunes songs offer, but tracks can played in seconds, and cost much less than the songs on iTunes, which generally are priced at 69 cents to $1.29 each.