Since shutting down Lala about a year ago, Apple has been quite on this front and consumers have been left without a solution. There have been a few services available including, Libox, but none with the reputation and backing of the “Big 3″.  Google is rumored to be close to a launch of Google Music and Apple might be in the process of enhancing its MobleMe service to include a music locker later in the fall with the new release of iOS. But Amazon has beat them both to the punch and has launched the Amazon Cloud Drive.

CNET has posted a pretty complete review of the new service. Bottom line – when it come to online music storage and playback, Amazon Cloud Drive is now the service to beat. Price is very reasonable (starting with 5 GB free) and easy integration with Amazon MP3 music store.

Intro video from Amazon explains the idea behind the service. Looks like 2011 will be a competitive year in this space which is a good thing for all of us. More than ever there will be no reason not to have your digital music collection backed up!

Bloomberg is reporting

that Apple is “in talks to acquire online music service Lala, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

The shoe fits. Back when Lala launched I described it as an iTunes in the cloud — something that we believe Apple will inevitably launch. Apple is certainly building a lot of data center capacity for something. Lala is already one of two companies powering full-song streaming for Google’s new music search (the other one is MySpace Music via its iLike acquisition), and it is a part of the Facebook gift shop. Lala already has all the streaming licenses in place with the major music companies and a team which can help Apple create a killer streaming version of iTunes.

We’ve been huge fans of Lala since its launch in October (you can see our extensive coverage here. The site uses an innovative ‘web song’ model that lets you buy albums for very cheap (10 cents per song) that you can then stream as many times as you’d like. That pay-to-stream model would certainly be more attractive to Apple than just an advertising-supported one. Lala’s streaming licenses might also allow iTunes to deliver a full-song sample instead of the 30-second previews currently available.

Update: I walked over to the Lala office, which is only a few blocks from us, to see if I could gather any more details. They didn’t seem particularly happy to see me. I knocked on the door and a Lala employee answered, keeping the door half shut so that I couldn’t see in. I asked if any of the company’s executives were around. He looked over his shoulder, asked if they were, and a second later said they weren’t (it was not a particularly convincing effort). He promptly shut the door, and I’m pretty sure I heard someone inside say something to the effect of “Are you serious, don’t answer it!”.

Obviously this isn’t confirmation of anything, but they’re clearly on high alert.

One other point to note: back in October we did an extensive sneak preview of the long-awaited Lala iPhone app. The Lala team had previously been concerned about having their app rejected because of the way it competed with the native iTunes app, but in light of the recent acceptance of apps like Spotify

they were optimistic.

It’s now been more than a month since we gave that preview. Six days ago I reached out to Lala to find out what the situation was, and while CEO Geoff Ralston replied, he totally ignored the question. Most CEOs in that position would have at least acknowledged that they had fallen prey to the Apple approval process.

We’re still digging for more.

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CrunchBase Information

Lala

Website:	lala.com
Location:	Palo Alto, California, United States
Funding:	$35.1M

Lala is a hub for online music discovery and purchasing. Users can listen for free music, adding tracks to their playlist as they surf. members who download a plugin can turn Lala into an online music locker that syncs their desktop music libraries… Learn More

Apple

Website:	apple.com
Location:	Cupertino, California, United States
Founded:	April 1, 1976
IPO:	1980

Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computer maker to include consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from… Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

This could be very interesting for music lovers out there. If you haven’t tried out lala.com yet, I highly recommend it!