Yesterday I posted about Lala.com over on the Rogue Amoeba weblog. You can read the full article, but in short, I discussed the very cool Lala.com music service, which offers several advantages over the iTunes Store. I'd certainly encourage you to check out Lala.com if you're interested in online music sales.

Harry McCracken spoke effusively about the service in a piece last month. Of note, McCracken mentioned that Lala had an iPhone application in the works:

"An iPhone application that lets you stream your entire music to your phone; as long as you’ve got an Internet connection, the effect is a little like having an iPod with infinite capacity. (The iPhone app isn’t available yet, but I saw a preview and liked it; the company says it’ll arrive soon.)"

This application would be noteworthy for two reasons. First up, Lala offers online storage of all your tracks (in your entire music library, not just purchased), with playback possible through your web browser. This is a very handy way to have access to your music from anywhere. However, their web player uses Flash, which means it won't work on the iPhone. An iPhone application would make it possible to access this music as long as you had a network connection, and would be very cool. Think of it like the iPod app, (effectively) connected to your entire home Library. As McCracken notes, it's like having infinite music capacity on the iPhone.

In addition to providing access to your library, Lala would no doubt like to make it possible for you to purchase music on the go through their store. Of course, this would compete directly with the iTunes Music Store, and it seems unlikely that Apple would allow it. The question then is, does this benefit the consumer in any way? In previous rejections, Apple has generally had some sort of consumer-focused reason for banning an application, even if it's as simple as "taste". It would seem that precluding other stores from the iPhone has benefits only for Apple, at the expense of customer choice.

Lala's application remains unreleased, but it certainly seems ripe for rejection by Apple, both for competing with Apple's store and competing with the iPod portion itself. I'll be very interested to see if Lala is allowed to release an application in the App Store, and if so, just how much functionality it contains.