“Apple ended up paying around $80 million for the company, according to multiple sources. That’s less than half of what investors were valuing the company at in 2008, but it’s more than the $35 million the company raised throughout its life. Which means that some investors could get their money back and more,” Kafka reports.
“Meanwhile the LaLa team, which should begin reporting to Apple today, gets credit for selling the company at any kind of premium at all. It’s not a home run, but it’s much better than it could have been,” Kafka reports.
“LaLa’s real asset was its technology team: In the end, Apple bought the company to get its hands on the company’s engineers, who had built a slick streaming service as well as an iPhone app that Apple has yet to approve,” Kafka reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
“Apple paid $80 million for Lala”…
…which they found in the seat cushions of the couch in Steve’s office.
Chump change for another great iTunes differentiator.
Still leaves plenty of money left to buy Adobe.
@R2 – Apple buys companies like Lala and PA Semi “to get its hands on the company’s engineers”.
@R2
if only they would. Do us all a favour; create a consistent user interface across the whole programme suite, slash the bloat and knife the Flash baby.
“Still leaves plenty of money left to buy Adobe.”
It will never happen. Apple has had too many opportunities to do it before and passed.
HA. Just like those Apple bastards to hold off approving Lala’s app until the negotiations are over.
@ R2 – Apple isn’t Microsoft (despite what the demented “they’re both equally evil!” folks would have us believe).
Microsoft has the history of buying out competitors just to kill them off.
Apple’s history of acquisitions (or at least the ones within this past decade) have all been additive purchases, acquiring technology and/or expertise which aligns well with the goals they already have.
For that reason, I don’t think we’ll ever see an Apple-buys-Adobe scenario.
R2 writes, “Still leaves plenty of money left to buy Adobe.”
Oh, give it a rest! Adobe could never provide the requisite ROI to justify the purchase, and Apple could develop competitive products for a fraction of the cost required to buy the company outright.
And buy Adobe for what? To sell Photoshop copies? All Adobe tools are doomed, specially Flash.
Microsoft buys marketing and advertising companies, Apple buys companies for their engineers.
That is all you need to know about innovation at MS and Apple.
Engineers versus advertisers, APPL vs MSFT. Hohoho!
Now, $34,920,000,000 to go…
A beautiful aside to the app store is that when Apple sees a great idea/product in development, they get FIRST DIBS!
OMG another kind of nail is the M$ coffin!
Apple should buy Autodesk
69¢, 99¢ or 1.69¢ to own a song or 1.99¢ to own it and stream it forever?
“On Friday I reported that Apple was buying Lala at a fire sale price, which meant that investors in the music service wouldn’t get their money back.” Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD.
I just made something up, and then turned it into an article. That’s how we get paid. It doesn’t have to be true. We don’t really do research. It takes too long.
@ HolyMackerel
While I like you pricing idea, it’s amazing that it would still be a ripoff compared to Lala’s. That’s between $.30 & $1.30 extra to have streaming rights, whereas with Lala it’s $.10 web rights purchases they currently offer.
Also what made Lala great was that any songs you bought from other sources besides Lala you gained access to as well. If this wasn’t the case then it wouldn’t have had anywhere near the adoption rate that it was enjoying.
What I’m hoping will happen is that Apple will add this as a MobileMe feature. You gain streamable access to your entire iTunes library (Not just the Apple purchased songs). Otherwise I will be one sad monkey. I was so looking forward to bringing my iPhone to my friends apartments, popping it into a speaker dock, and loading up the Lala iPhone app to allow complete access to my library. Sadly though I think this might just be a pipe dream, since the Lables will try and smother this idea & because Apple wanted Lala more for the programmers than the business plan.
this is interesting, i sent it to MDN but they neglected to do anything with it, and i thought competition was sacred to the good ol USA?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/07/music-price-comparison-challenge-itunes
Lala la la la laaaa la la la la laa! ♥ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♫ ♫ ♫
Someone had to do it.
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I hope they change the name!
As for ‘still enough to buy Adobe’. Their money would be better spent building a new PS killer, and a Pro-level version of iWeb, one that is easy to use, works from a design standpoint, yet has all the powerful tools.
Apple could buy that waste-of-space outfit Unsanity for small change and give us back our much-missed WindowShade.
” Jerez , let’s hope apple approves our app! That will insure our survival !”
bad news, they won’t approve the app, but wants to know if we will
sell for 80,000,000, and have great new jobs at apple!
Decisions decisions , what to do?
No, they didn’t. They paid around $17 million for a company that already had $14 million in the bank. So out of pocket expense to Apple was $3 million.
People need to get their facts straight before blabbing figures like $80 million around the interwebs.
Personally, I don’t believe that Apple paid $80 million for this company. If Apple confirms it, I’ll believe it. For $80 million, which is an enormous sum to pay for the services of a small engineering team, Apple could have offered each LaLa engineer a ridiculous salary (say, $1 million a year) and saved themselves a bundle of dough.
Actually, this would have been very smart of Apple since the offer doubles as an IQ test. Anyone who turns down $1 million a year is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.