Apple plans to make an iTunes-related announcement Tuesday at 7 am PT. “Tomorrow is just another day,” a notice on Apple.com reads. “That you’ll never forget. Check back here tomorrow for an exciting announcement from iTunes.”

Not much to work with there, though one could argue that “Check back here”–i.e., at Apple.com–suggests a Web-based iTunes Store. That said, “you’ll never forget” would seem to point to an “iTunes Anywhere” subscription service or some cloud-based version of iTunes. Which is what Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is expecting as well.

“We believe Apple could announce a cloud-based iTunes service for content streaming to connected devices,” he said in a note to clients this morning. “Apple is developing a data center in Maiden, NC that we believe could serve as the hub for such a service. The company has indicated that the data center is on track to be completed by the end of CY10 and it will begin using it then. With Apple’s growing family of connected devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Macs) it only makes sense that Apple would deliver a cloud-based media service to leverage its competitive advantage in the space: devices. As part of this, the new Apple TV with limited storage, a lower price, and a focus on accessing content over the internet would fit in nicely. We see this device, and the potential iTunes cloud-based service, as a stepping stone for an all-in-one, connected Apple television.”

Seems a savvy guess to me, particularly since it’s been about a year since Apple bought streaming music outfit Lala and we haven’t yet seen anything come of that acquisition. ‘Course it could also just as easily be iOS 4.2 or the debut of the Beatles catalog on iTunes.

Peter Kafka has a few thoughts on this as well.

So says Billboard’s Ed Christman, who has been talking to label executives familiar with Google’s (GOOG) proposals for its yet-to-be-launched service. The music industry hasn’t agreed to any of this yet, so the gap between “like to” and “will be” could be significant. But it’s worth reading Christman’s piece to get a sense of what the Google guys are looking for.

In short:

• Google would like to sell music a track at a time, just as Apple’s iTunes does.
• Google would like to give users the ability to listen to any track all the way through, at least once, as MySpace Music does, and Lala did before Apple (AAPL) acquired it and shut it down. Google’s music search service provides free full plays for some songs but not others.
• Google would like to offer a $25 a year “locker service,” where any music you own, no matter where you procured it, would be stored on an Internet server. You could then listen to a stream of the song no matter where you where, via a Web player or a mobile phone.
• Google would like to let subscribers share their music with their friends, allowing them to listen to a song a single time.

All of which sounds pretty good. And all of which sounds like concepts that the labels would be fine with, in theory–even the part about letting you access songs you “shared” via P2P services.

The sticking point, of course, will be money: How much will the labels demand up front, how much will they charge per user or per use, and how will the money be split up between different rights holders?

The last part is a question that often gets ignored when people start spitballing ideas for music services, but it’s crucial, because music rights are a complicated web that tangles up even the best intentions. Even if the “labels” agree to Google’s terms, that likely won’t be enough, because the “labels” don’t usually own songs outright–any given song or catalog may have multiple owners.

That’s not a problem if you simply want to open up another download store, or even a streaming subscription service, because there’s a broad consensus about how to split up the pennies that those generate. But with something new, like the locker/sharing proposal, there are a lot of cats to herd. Which makes this stuff interesting but far from definitive.

Yesterday, at the Apple music event in San Francisco, I had a short chat with Apple CEO Steve Jobs as he strolled through the demo room for the media, just after he had announced various updates for the iPod, Apple TV and iTunes onstage.

One of the those was the introduction of a new social network for music called Ping that Apple (AAPL) has integrated within iTunes 10 and which looks an awful lot like the experience you get on Facebook.

Essentially, it is a vertical version–in this case for music–of the powerful social networking site.

Facebook has noodled for years about creating its own social music offering, including doing a partnership with Lala, which was bought by Apple last year and shuttered in June.

But its efforts have largely gone nowhere.

And Facebook is nowhere on Ping, either. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook–or Twitter or MySpace–on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions went nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted “onerous terms that we could not agree to,” related to connecting with Facebook friends on Ping.

For those who are struck by the word, the definition of onerous, according to an online dictionary: “Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations.”

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate connecting with Facebook or even using Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

“We could, I guess,” he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: “You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.”

Okay, although being more open would work too!

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted:

“Maybe Apple plans on joining the rest of the Web, via an open API that will let Facebook, Twitter et al–maybe even the to-be-launched Google (GOOG) music service–play nicely with Ping. We’ll see.”

Facebook–including some execs who are definitely irked about how closely Ping resembles Facebook, right down to the blue color scheme–hopes so.

Consider the statement issued by Facebook to me–after attempts to get it verbally failed, due ironically to several dropped connections on the iPhone of the exec I spoke to:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

In other words: Zing, Ping.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, a Facebook connection feature appeared to be in Ping when some signed up–not for me–as noted by Cult of Mac. And Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer even spotted the wording in Jobs’s stage presentation. I have an email into Apple PR asking for a comment on the change.

In any case, at the Apple event, Jobs told me he had great hopes for the social music service, adding that Ping could be the most significant thing to come out of yesterday’s announcements.

But soon enough he moved right on to the new iPods, declaring enthusiastically: “Isn’t the nano amazing?”

Now Lala’s gone. Apple shut it down last night sometime after 2 am Eastern. And there’s nothing in its place. Just this message:

Free streaming music hasn’t completely left the Web: You can still get it at MySpace Music and in various forms at sites like GrooveShark and HypeMachine.

But the big music labels, which own a piece of MySpace Music, aren’t happy with this arrangement. And the other services are in a legal gray area–they’re not fully licensed, but the labels aren’t trying to sue them out of business, yet.

Meanwhile Spotify, which delights European music lovers with its free service, has yet to get permission to operate in the U.S. If it does, it’s almost certain to cut back on gratis tunes in favor of a subscription offering.

So what about a cloud-based model, whereby you access music you own from anywhere you can get a Web connection? Apple (AAPL) seems interested in the idea, and so does Google (GOOG). But I have a hunch we’re not going to see anything like this soon.

Still, maybe Steve Jobs has a surprise up his sleeve. Perhaps he’ll tip his hand tonight, when the Apple CEO sits down for an interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at D8. We’ll have live coverage beginning around 6 pm Pacific.

No time soon, from what I can tell.

I’ve been on the phone all day with music industry sources. None of them know of any specific plans Apple has to replace Lala at the end of May, when it will shutter the streaming music company it bought last December.

Sources tell me that in the past few weeks, Apple has started signaling to the labels that it’s interested in a Web-based version of iTunes, its dominant music retail platform. But those conversations are preliminary at best.

So if you’re expecting to hear about an “iTunes.com” offering in the near future — like during Apple’s June 7 developer conference — you’re likely to be disappointed.

That said, moving music to the Web does seem to be on Apple’s agenda.

Sources say the company approached the labels earlier this year about a cloud-based “locker” service, where users could streams songs they owned to multiple devices.

But that went nowhere quickly — “a swing and a miss”, in the words of an industry insider — because the labels argued that streaming a single purchase to multiple devices constituted multiple uses, which meant they should receive more for the songs they  sell through iTunes.

It’s possible that Apple (AAPL) could argue that it doesn’t need the labels’ permission to launch a locker service, and that users have the right to do whatever they want with their content.

But even if that argument held up legally, it would enrage the labels, who already feel that Steve Jobs hoodwinked them when he set up the iTunes model in 2003. And even if Jobs didn’t mind antagonizing the labels, it would make his current efforts to romance other content providers, like TV networks, even more difficult.

Apple could also try a subscription/rental model for iTunes, like the one currently offered by the likes of Rhapsody, MOG and Spotify (at least in Europe). But no one has figured out how to rent music at a price that satisfies consumers, the labels and the music services. At least not on a large scale.

So no matter what strategy Apple pursues, it’s going to require a new set of negotiations with the labels, who might be prickly partners this time around. Hard to see this one getting off the ground and into the cloud in a hurry.

“We have almost $25 billion safely in the bank and zero debt. This provides us tremendous stability and the ability to invest our way through this downturn. This is what we did during the last downturn–we increased R&D investments and created some of our best new products and businesses, like the Apple retail stores, for one. This downturn may also present some extraordinary opportunities for companies that have the cash to take advantage of them, like Apple does.”

— Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Oct. 21, 2008

Apple made its first acquisition on March 2, 1988, with the purchase of Network Innovations. Since then, Apple has bought just 23 more companies (see table; click to enlarge), including Quattro Wireless, which it purchased for $275 million. Which isn’t all that many for a company with $23 billion in the bank (as a point of comparison, Google has acquired 11 companies in the last 18 months alone).

But that may soon change, because Cupertino finally has a dedicated acquisitions specialist, Adrian Perica. According to BusinessWeek, the former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker, who was brought in after Apple reportedly lost AdMob to Google (GOOG), is believed to have quarterbacked the company’s purchase of music site Lala in December and Quattro Wireless earlier this month.

Both were executed uncharacteristically quickly for Apple, which suggests that the company’s lackadaisical, ad hoc approach to M&A has been recast to make it, necessarily, more nimble. Said one Silicon Valley banker: “[Apple has] always gone slow on M&A, but that’s changing.”

Perhaps it’s a good time for that long-rumored merger with Adobe (ADBE). Then again, it’s probably never a good time for something like that.

To work on a mysterious cloud-computing project, which has something to do with mobility and entertainment. That’s per TechFlash, which reported on the deal Sunday.

Probably best not to make too much of this one. Given that Real didn’t announce the deal (let alone report it to the Securities and Exchange Commission), it can’t be for much money (note that the last purchase Real bothered to announce was for $4 million). And the Lala deal aside, you can “acqhire” a group of engineers without laying out a lot of cash these days.

But it is a good reminder that RealNetworks (RNWK) wants to make itself a player in the next phase of entertainment–the one where you buy or rent the stuff over the Web and consume it wherever you want.

That’s at least partly why CEO Rob Glaser is still wrangling with Hollywood over his “RealDVD” system, which is supposed to let you rip copies of DVDs you already own. Because once you’ve done that, the next logical step is moving the file to your iPod or your tablet or just to different rooms in your house.

The problem, of course, is that everyone else wants to play there, too. And many already are in some form.

There are the hardware guys like Sony (SNE), who are selling TV sets and game consoles with Web connections, and cable guys like Comcast (CMCSA), who already control the pipe that brings the stuff to your living room. And telcos like Verizon (VZ), which want to do the same thing. And, of course, retailers like Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX), which are already selling digital entertainment. Etc.

During the first Web boom, it seemed Real would be in this list as well, since its back-end technology and its RealPlayer were commonly used to move entertainment around the Internet. Now the company is best known for its Rhapsody music service and its collection of casual games, but it doesn’t have pole position in either sector.

You’ll hear plenty more about this stuff over the next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off Wednesday. But Real will probably be mum.

The company doesn’t have any announcements planned and isn’t renting space at the convention’s main show floor. Not a terrible idea to lie low at CES, where lots of people make a lot of noise about stuff that never comes to pass. But at some point, it will be interesting to see how Real plans to compete.

Apple ended up paying around $80 million for the company, according to multiple sources. That’s less than half what investors valued the company at in 2008, but it’s more than the $35 million the company raised throughout its life. Which means that some investors could get their money back and more.

But not all of Lala’s investors. Warner Music Group (WMG), for one, ended up getting back about half the $20 million it put into Lala, I’ve confirmed with people familiar the company.

That’s consistent with the $11 million write-down Warner took on its stake back in March. But it’s also confusing. Most venture deals include a clause that gives investors the right to get their money back–often with a premium–before anyone else gets paid following a sale. So any price of $35 million or more should have paid back the music label in full.

I’ve asked Warner for comment, but haven’t heard back. I’ve also reached out to co-investors Bain Capital Ventures and Ignition Capital. Apple (AAPL) spokesman Steve Dowling offered up his now-standard line on the deal: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.”

Warner executives can at least say that they did better on Lala than they did with Imeem, a rival digital music service. Warner lost all of the $15 million it put into that one, which is being acquired by News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace.

And the Warner guys can also tell themselves that employees from a company they once backed are now working at Apple, which can’t hurt.

Meanwhile, the Lala team, which should begin reporting to Apple today, gets credit for selling the company at any kind of premium at all. It’s not a home run, but it’s much better than it could have been.

The start-up has gone through multiple iterations, and its most recent was a streaming music service that sold access to songs for 10 cents apiece. But despite a recent promotional deal with Google (GOOG), the company appeared unlikely to succeed on its own.

Silicon Valley chatter is that founder Bill Nguyen, who spent six months in Hawaii this year trying to launch another start-up, and CEO Geoff Ralston had become weary of the same problems that have bedeviled other music start-ups. So they were looking to land Lala at a larger entity.

One thing that helped the company extract a decent price is that it had $10 million cash on hand, say sources who’ve seen the company’s books. That  meant it didn’t have to sell immediately.

But Lala’s real asset was its technology team: In the end, Apple bought the company to get its hands on its engineers, who had built a slick streaming service as well as an iPhone app, which Apple has yet to approve.

If you’re feeling glass-half-empty, you can note that Lala’s $80 million price tag is a big comedown from the $200 million investors thought the company was worth a couple of years ago. But if you’re feeling more generous, you can conclude that any kind of return is worth noting.

The last big exit for a digital music company happened way back in the spring of 2007, when CBS (CBS) paid $280 million for Last.fm. But no one has gotten anything close to that for digital music since then. Imeem is being sold for spare parts, and News Corp. also bought iLike at a steep discount. Spiralfrog filed for Chapter 11 after burning through its cash.

But people are still trying. Pandora Media raised another $35 million this summer after a royalty deal helped breathe life into the Internet radio company.

Meanwhile, venture-backed MOG, whose investors also include some music labels, has just launched a streaming music service of its own. And Spotify, the European music service, has raised a pile of money and generated much more hype, though it has yet to land in the U.S.

Maybe one of them will get it right.

As AllThingsD.com gets its holiday hat on, the reporting team brought a little news cheer our way this week in the form of some acquisitions, freaky gadgets and reassurances that Google was not born with a heart two sizes too small.

Boom Town went Bing early in the week at the Microsoft (MSFT) event that showcased a rollout of features. New tools included an update to its mapping interface and some third-party “mash-ins.” Kara did ringside commentary for the title bout between Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and all the so-called whiny news folk. Her translations paint a slightly less cuddly picture of the search boss’s undertones, but we’ll let you decide for yourself. Just when things were getting a little dicey, Kara lightened the mood with a post about her appearance with Walt Mossberg at GadgetFest. Kara finally got a little “me” time, getting her face exfoliated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg live on stage. Gadget freak Greg Harper was there to showcase some of his picks, and Kara rounded it all out by getting up-close and personal with the most adorably frightening bear-toy-bot ever.

While Walt did make time to venture west to share his gadget gravitas, he was hard at work this week with the expected combo of tasty tech tips. Walt took a trip to the cloud to see if ZumoDrive could really make it rain. The smallish cloud storage company aims to solve the problem of sharing data across multiple devices by allowing you to keep a “drive” in the cloud that can be virtually mounted on any capable device. He was complimentary about the execution of the storage and was able to access his files across a broad array of devices. The caveat, for now, seems to be the price and a little glitchiness when handling certain kinds of files. Over at Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt addressed some queries about getting rid of that pesky spam that even shows up on the iPhone. He also provided some sage advice for a laptop seeker with $500 to spend, and helped guide a fan through the super-smartphone jungle to a GPS-enabled device. Katie’s gadget of the week over at The Mossberg Solution was the FlipShare TV, a set-top box from the makers of the popular ultraportable camera line. The video-wrangling box taps into a “channel” of your own videos you create using the bundled FlipShare software. Once your videos are up on your personal channel, the set-top box can tap into and play them right on your TV by grabbing them wirelessly from your computer. The gadget got an A for effort in getting computer content to the living room, but didn’t do as well in the intuitiveness and ease-of-use departments.

Over at Digital Daily, John brought news of what may come to be known at the “great perv purge of aught nine.” Some 4,500 registered sex offenders in the state of New York had their social networking privileges revoked. Weekend Update supposes the law is in place to keep the popular and harmless “Facebook stalking” pastime of perusing your friends’ photos from turning into the less desirable “actual stalking.” Next up, we had to shout egad, gadzooks and holy-48 cores, Batman! John covered the unveiling of a next-generation superchip that boasts 10 to 20 times the computing power of Intel’s current Core CPUs. Finally, John always does a great job of sniffing out a story before it gets huge, and Motorola’s investment into a high-tech multitouch platform may trigger the next big smartphone battle. The haptic touch technology, which enables virtually any material to become touch sensitive, may pave the way for a new generation of devices.

Down the hall at MediaMemo, Peter reported on what might be the shiniest news of the week. Time Inc. (TWX) released a concept video of Sports Illustrated as it may appear on a large multitouch device. The result is a mag-as-multimedia showcase that might exist as soon as a suitable device is released to the public. In an effort to reduce some of the cash that has been weighing down its bank accounts, Google picked up AppJet, the makers of Web-based collaboration software EtherPad. Peter rounded out the week with a purchase of Apple’s (AAPL) very own: The iTunes maker purchased online music service Lala, reportedly at a steep discount.

With the holidays looming and lots of frenetic travel ahead, you can always rely on this site for a little direction in any particular (technological) storm. We cant help it, we’re just givers.

Apple has purchased online music service Lala, I’ve confirmed with a source familiar with the transaction. Both Bloomberg and CNET reported the chats earlier today. If you’d like other confirmation, New York Times also reports that the deal has closed.

Lala’s investors will not get a return on the $35 million they’ve put into the company. Earlier this year, founder Bill Nguyen told me he was working on a deal to get the company more funding in an “up round”–that is, at a higher value than the previous round.

But Warner Music Group (WMG), which had previously invested $20 million in Lala, wrote down $11 million of that. And a source tells me that the Apple transaction reflected a similar discount, meaning that investors will be lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar on this one.

UPDATE: A second source close to the company insists my estimate is “way off” but won’t offer up other details.

What’s unclear is exactly what Apple has bought. Lala offers listeners a streaming music service with one free play and access to replays–not downloads–for 10 cents a track. But while the service recently got a boost via Google’s (GOOG) new music search offering, where it’s one of two featured partners, it doesn’t have a huge customer base to sell, which means Apple (AAPL) could be interested in acquiring its technology and/or team.

The deal is the third acquisition of an online music service in recent months. News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace has already picked up iLike and Imeem at fire-sale prices.

I’ve put in requests for comment to both Apple and Lala.

The search giant is working on a new service that will provide searchers with streaming music, which sounds a whole lot like a content play at first blush. But Google will only be offering limited bits of music, and it will be relying on other companies to actually provide the tunes.

Sources describe the service, which they refer to as “One Box,” as a refined set of answers for music queries. The idea: Punch in, say, “Madonna,” and you’ll be presented with one or more songs, which may be partial clips or full-length versions, then guided to other sites where you can purchase the music.

That is: If you’re looking for Google (GOOG) to launch a rival to Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes or to music streaming services like iMeem and MySpace Music, this isn’t it.

In fact, Google is actually partnering, in a way, with News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace: iLike, the music start-up that MySpace purchased earlier this year, is one of the two services providing music to Google, industry sources tell me. The other is Lala.com, which has a novel streams-plus-cheap-songs concept. (This is presumably one of the “big announcements” Lala founder Bill Nyguen was referring to yesterday when I spoke to him).

UPDATE: Streaming music service imeem will also be providing songs for the new service, I’m told by people familiar with Google’s plans. It’s unclear to me whether the company will provide full streams in search results. No comment from Google, Lala, MySpace or Imeem. Or the labels, for that matter.

At this point I’m not clear how Google and the labels will determine how much of a song a searcher will be able to listen to. Last I time I checked, iLike didn’t have the ability to provide full song streams at all. And Lala’s licenses only allow the service to provide listeners with a full song once–after that, they have to purchase the track from the service.

One other note: “OneBox” is the name of an existing Google feature that offers up not just links, but actual answers to certain queries. (Think of weather, or stock results). So while it’s possible that Google intends to brand the service with that name, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the term the company has been using internally and with the labels, and that the service will have a different name when it launches.

TechCrunch first reported about the service this morning.

Less boast-worthy: Warner has written off almost all its investments in lala and imeem, two digital music start-ups it once thought would help save it from the slump in CDs.

In 2008, Warner invested $20 million in lala.com and $15 million in imeem.com. Now the label is taking a $33 million charge on the two start-ups.

The company’s 10-Q, filed this morning, spells it out: It wrote off $16 million in imeem–its entire investment–and half of its investment in lala. It also threw away $4 million via a “receivable write-off” related to imeem–that is, the start-up owes Warner money the label doesn’t expect to see again.

This appears to explain why Warner wasn’t bothering to renegotiate its streaming rights deal with imeem earlier this year even though it owned an equity stake in the company: It looks like the label had already concluded the company wasn’t worth saving. UPDATE: A person familiar with the situation says Warner may yet hammer out a new agreement with imeem.

Asset write-downs–acknowledgements that the stuff you bought back in the boom is worth a lot less now–have been par for the course for big media companies following last fall’s crash. If anything, Warner is a little late to the game here–many of its peers took their lumps last quarter.

But it is unfortunate for imeem, which has just raised an emergency funding round–something in the single-digit millions, I’m told–and is still out trying to land more cash.

For the record, Warner said music sales were down 17.6 percent in the last quarter and that the company lost 45 cents a share on revenue of  $668 million. Analysts had been looking for revenue of $730 million. Warner attributed a loss of 22 cents a share to the write-downs.

And as far as Warner’s digital revenue goes, that six percent increase is worrisome since it shows continued deceleration: A year ago, digital revenue had increased 48 percent over the previous year. And Warner’s digital total was up just one percent over the previous quarter.