Tweets about Apple acquiring Lala have been flooding Twitter for 3+ days now. A number of sources have provided news and analysis on the acquisition. Personally I think Apple aims to move iTunes to the web in an effort to control mobile cloud-based music streaming via iPhones and iPods. Mobility is paramount, and I think that buying Lala was a sound move for Apple. By combining the best features of iTunes and Lala, Apple should be able to make a more seamless streaming experience with a simpler payment process—a simple payment process leads to more people buying. You can bet there will be an iPhone app that enables buying and simplifies the buying process.

Die-hard Lala users hope that Apple will keep Lala’s key features in tact, and many are looking forward to new feature possibilities. Hopefully with the help of its Lala’s developers, Apple will be able to build onto Lala’s platform making music more accessible. Lala enables users to upload mp3′s from their computer so they can access them from anywhere through their Lala account. In Lala’s words, “Play it anywhere on the web. Most of your music will be matched to Lala’s catalog [and] any remaining unmatched MP3s can be uploaded to Lala.”

A massive user-submitted music library is being built in the cloud. What I’d really like to see is for everyone’s uploads to be available to everyone, much like they are in Grooveshark—a free music streaming service that lets users upload tracks to the cloud. Let’s compare their relative popularity with other some streaming/download services—Spotify, MOG, and Amie Street—in the graph below:

What’s worth noting about MOG having the most visitors is that MOG markets itself more as a social network—their tagline is “Discover People Through Music and Music Through People.” Having social features clearly plays a big role in web-based music discovery—it’s social music discovery. Extended stats and analysis are to follow in Part 2 later this week.

• Photo: Lala Apple Logo Mashup by VirtualMusictv/Flickr
• View Lala screenshots.