Are Apple about to take over music?

• 8th Jun 2010

On April 1st, 1976, a crack group of nerds established Apple Computer, Inc. They kicked around for a decade or so before finally getting it together in the late 90s, turning misfortune and misadventure into oodles and oodles of cash for their smug (and now very rich) shareholders.

Previously bought only by beardy purists, Apple's products can now be found in most households and are market leaders in the world of portable media players. There are few who would question the importance of the ipod in the development of the digital music scene.

The recent launch of the ipad and new iphone (yawn) is significant, but not so much for what Apple are talking about (their marketers have divine knowingness down to an art form) but what they're not. On the 4th December, 2009, Apple bought www.lala.com, an American music streaming site similar to Spotify. If you check out lala's site, you'll see a brief message noting that the service has been discontinued as of May 31st, 2010. In their last two big press conferences (for the ipad and iphone) lala wasn't mentioned.

itunes has long been criticised for it's restrictive and overbearing nature and as Apple have moved into selling videos and other interactive content with music, the size of individual downloads has soared. Are Apple moving away from this particular model and considering alternatives? Are Apple about to launch istream?