Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is close to purchasing Lala, an online music service that lets your hear a song once for free before purchasing it.
The terms of the deal weren’t known. The people declined to be identified because talks are still in progress. Investors in Palo Alto, California-based Lala include New York-based Warner Music Group Corp., Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures and Ignition Partners in Bellevue, Washington.
The Lala service lets users listen to any song on its site once for free. Customers can then opt to buy the track for 10 cents and listen to it on the Web. The service differs from iTunes because the music is stored on servers via so-called cloud computing, instead of being downloaded to the user's computer. If customers decide to download a track, the cost is 79 cents -- compared with iTunes’ price of 69 cents to $1.29.
The potential acquisition by Apple is interesting because Lala is one of Google's partners for its recently launched music search feature. You can find more discussion of the potential deal here on Techmeme.com.
Bloomberg is 
