It’s official, Apple is shutting down Lala.com, a streaming service where users could pay for the rights to steam songs or buy and download them. After May 31, 2010, however, the web music will stop streaming and customers will be given iTunes credit.

CNet says Apple bought Lala for the streaming technology and the move is no surprise:

Apple’s decision to close Lala isn’t much of a surprise as Lala never found much of a foothold as a standalone music service. The real prize for Apple was the company’s streaming technology. Shortly after the Apple’s December acquisition of Lala, sources told CNET that Lala’s engineers and leaders would help spearhead a cloud-based streaming service.

Reader A. is really disappointed:

Apple bought lala.com as you had previously reported but now they’re going to destroy it along with all the songs I had streaming with the service! It was such a good service too, even my mom bought songs and she never uses those content distribution services. They’re offering me itunes credit, but the two services are not comparable. The reason why I bought lala songs was for their diverse artist base which itunes does not quite match.

Apple says bye-bye to Lala [CNet]

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