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When Apple purchased the cloud-based music streaming service Lala in December of 2009 and then announced a few months later that it was planning to shut it down, many hoped that this signaled Apple's intentions to launch its own cloud-based version under the iTunes label. And so, a replacement for Lala was on many people's wishlist for announcements they hoped to hear Steve Jobs make today at WWDC.

But unfortunately, Jobs had no such news.

Fanit is another start-up that has discovered the gospel of game play and is using it to promote their music recommendation experience.

Fans support their favorite artists and bands by purchasing badges. 100% of the money for the badges go to the artists, according to the company's PR representative. As the fan purchases badges and engages in recommendation actions, they earn "rank." That rank gives the fan a chance at "superfan" status and, according to the company, creates opportunities for interactions with the listener's favorite musicians.

About two months ago, the popular music- and photo-streaming service Simplify Media suddenly shut down its services and pulled its mobile apps from Apple's App Store. Today, we finally found out why. During his keynote presentation at Google I/O, Google's vice president of engineering, Vic Gundotra, noted that Google has acquired Simplify Media. Google will use Simplify Media's technology to allow Android users to stream their music directly from their desktops to their phones.

The speculation about Apple launching its own streaming service in place of Lala is fueling the competition for online music services.

Apple acquired Lala last year. The popular service sold songs for 10 cents. The songs streamed in web browsers. Music could not be downloaded for the low priced tracks. Update: Higher priced tracks could be downloaded.

Ticketfly, a startup that helps concert promoters leverage social media and sell tickets, announced earlier this week that it has raised $3 million in Series A funding from various firms and angels. Co-founded by Dan Teree and Andrew Dreskin, Ticketfly is - in a way - the rebirth of an earlier company, TicketWeb, which sold to Ticketmaster in 2000. After years of success, TicketWeb found itself unable to grow to its full potential, leading to the birth of a new venture, Ticketfly. Teree and Dreskin's story serves as a lesson to startups of how acquisitions by large, slow moving companies can lead to frustrated entrepreneurs.

Startup culture is continually growing in the greater public interest, and with that growth comes a sort of celebrity for the founders of the more popular companies. Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams are now household names, and in many ways, these entrepreneurs are like rock stars in the startup world. In fact, the journey of an entrepreneur through the startup experience is a lot like that of a musician seeking stardom and millions of adoring fans, and artist Shane Snow has a perfect infographic to illustrate this.

Spotify, the red-hot European music service that's like iTunes, Pandora, MOG and more combined, released a new version last week that integrates with Facebook last week. I've been hearing about Spotify for months but hadn't actually seen it before - it's not available in the United States yet and no one knows when it will be. Even traveling to Europe, downloading the app and then coming back to the States will get your account shut down after a grace period streaming from a US IP.

Thanks to a friend though, I got a copy of Spotify a few days ago! I can report that it is simply awesome, and I'm just using the free version so far. Here's an annotated screenshot below, in case you're as curious as I was. This may be old news for some uber-hip types, but I'm guessing most readers haven't seen the interface before. I hadn't.

MP3tunes, which was launched by tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson in 2005, allows its users to store their own music in the cloud. Until today, however, the amount of free storage on MP3tunes was limited to a relatively meager 2GB. Now, however, the company has decided to up the ante and plans to give its users 10GB of free storage which can be accessed from virtually anywhere (browser, iPhone, Android, Wii, Playstation, Chumby etc.). MP3tunes already has a backlog of invites, but the company graciously agreed to give 150 of our readers priority access to its expanded music lockers. Read on for more details about how to claim yours.

Looking for that next booming trend in the tech industry? Perhaps you need to look no further than music, as a report from the site Indie Music Tech shows that this year's first quarter music tech investments nearly doubled from the previous two years. Author Duncan Freeman estimates 25 deals in Q1 2010, far surpassing the 27 total investments in the opening months of 2008 and 2009, but averaging a slightly lower deal size at $4.4 million per investment.

Calling itself an "all you can eat, on demand, whenever you want it" music service, MOG gives its users access to "just about every artist, album and song ever made" for $5 a month - certainly not a deal to scoff at.

Today, at the South By South West festival in Austin, the company has announced the release of a mobile version of its application.