All I’ve ever wanted to do with Pastepunk is write about music that I love and hope others find that to be useful and maybe entertaining. A big assist in this for the past couple of years has been utilizing music service Lala’s embeddable song and album streams in my news posts. What better way to get a person to check out something than put it right before them? Whether it was brand new music or a classic hardcore full-length from the early 90s, Lala’s 8 million song catalog proved to match my particular desires, and it was all the better that the service actually paid rights holders (despite most payments being de minimus). Users could stream any song on the site once before being prompted for purchase. It was the ultimate “try before you buy” music site.

It was disappointing to read this morning that the Lala will be shutting down May 31st, and that any new embedding has been immediately turned off. Apple purchased Lala several months ago and doomsday has finally come. The expectation is that Apple will or is already using Lala’s technology and staff to bring iTunes into the cloud. As a heavy iTunes user, I’ll enjoy this as much as anyone, but I can’t imagine Apple will keep Lala’s embed functionality (legal and financial reasons apply).

I plan to keeping doing my best writing about music that makes a difference in our lives, and I hope that another business takes a stab at what Lala was trying to do with some of the streaming elements of its service. Hey, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, MOG, and Spotify – are you listening?