Music Business Heads Into Virtual World

With its deal this month to buy the Web music service Lala, Apple may be pointing the way to the future of music. In this future, the digital music files on people's computers could join vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs in the dusty vault of fading music formats. Instead, music fans will use their always-online computers and smartphones to visit a vast Internet jukebox, where Gregorian chants, Lady Gaga tracks and the several centuries of music in between are instantly available. For a small but growing cadre of music lovers, the vision is not that outlandish.