Apple Inc has announced that it will be shutting down its online music service Lala on May 31st. We still do not have any convincing reasons for such a move from Apple.

Meanwhile, Techcrunch has reported that the possible reason could be that Apple is preparing for an “iTunes-in-the-cloud” offering. Cloud-sourcing a service like iTunes is inevitable and is something that we all are expecting. But killing a service like Lala which Apple acquired only last year, is sad.

Lala

If you try to join as a new user on Lala.com now, you will be presented with a message saying “Lala is shutting down. The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Unfortunately, we are no longer accepting new users.” But the existing users can still use Lala through May 31st, 2010. Also if you have some credits left with Lala, they will automatically be converted to iTunes credits.

Apple had bought Lala on December 4th 2009, for $80 million. Since past one year after Apple took over Lala, it was a popular online music marketplace. It allowed downloading of songs and albums. Also, users were able to upload music and share them with friends. It even allowed live streaming of music.

After the sad demise of Lala, rumors are that Apple is going to announce the iTunes cloud service on June 7th at WWDC.

(via Neowin)