Apple is close to acquiring digital-music service Lala, according to two sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Talks are very advanced, said the sources Friday. One of the sources said that the sides have already agreed on terms and have only to sign a final agreement.
Steve Dowling, Apple's spokesman, said the company doesn't comment on rumors and speculation. A representative from Lala was not immediately available.
An acquisition of Lala, a streaming-music site that has gone through multiple iterations including one as a CD-swapping service, would be the third acquisition deal of a digital-music site in recent months.
MySpace acquired iLike in August and Imeem last month.
Exactly what Apple intends to do with Lala remains unclear, but it would appear that Apple intends to offer some kind of streaming service to iTunes users. Right now, Apple is the largest music store online or offline and Apple has made more money than any other music service by selling music downloads.
But the public has shown an appetite for free music and many people have clamored for a better way to store music. Right now, most music libraries can be found on an owner's computer hard drive, which can malfunction. Lala enables users to store songs on the company's servers and access them from Web-enabled devices.
This story originally appeared on CNET