While reading through the comments of my Apple / LaLa post yesterday, I was shocked. Shocked at the amount of ignorance and misinformation that’s floating around out there, and that our readership is so easily gullible by said inaccuracies. Though I never do this, today I feel inclined to directly address a number of comments and dispel some of the idiocy that took place on this site yesterday.

• builtforsin says: “Anyone with lack of internet access 100% of the time, and if you have an Iphone like me, this is already a bad start….” Presumably there’s also be a download option, where you have access to a certain number of tracks locally (on your device or hard drive) if there is no Internet available. and “I guess if you only used Apple manufactured devices that would be great, but Apple doesn’t play nice with hardware not purchased from Apple.” I can’t speak to this issue as I use a Mac, but my PC-using friends don’t complain about iTunes/iPod on their PCs. I’m sure iPhone campatibility will only get better, especially if this type of service necessitates it.
• Tim says: “Digital still doesn’t have the same fidelity as a CD, unless you use wav files, which are huge and would eat memory.” True. But as Internet connections get better so will audio quality. No one is trying to scheme you with crappy audio… it’s just a bandwidth issue. Honestly, while I was initially a skeptic too and subscribed to the “audio quality” argument, it’s really hard to notice the difference between a 192 AAC and a full WAV/AIFF rip.
• Viking-Shredder: “I don’t know man. I’m still a fan of actually owning a physical copy of the music. Just something about having the physical copy makes me feel safer than confiding in computer files.” Also, you must like riding a horse and buggy because it’s “safer.”
  

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A less forward-thinking company might shirk at the prospect of an unlimited music streaming service, especially one whose music business is rooted so firmly in pay-per-track iTunes and the iPods/iPhones that carry said tracks. If Apple were as thick-headed and dense as the major record labels, they’d forge ahead with their existing models while attempting to sue the newcomers into oblivion. But Apple is not that company. Apple is smart, aware and aggressive, and as such they’ve recently purchased music streaming site LaLa, a move that seems to indicate the company will soon be pursuing a subscription-based model.

And if Apple is going to make a play at a subscription streaming model, then the holy grail of music experiences — the ability to stream any song, at any time, from anywhere (aka “the cloud”) — is that much closer to becoming reality.

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