TechCrunch guides Apple's purchase price of Lala down to $17 million

Since the purchase of Lala late last week by Apple, the topic of discussion is how much Apple paid for it and what they plan to do with the music streaming company.  We heard yesterday from Peter Kafka at Media Memo that the price was $80 million and that Warner music alone got $10 million of their investment back. 

Today, TechCrunch is saying that Apple only paid $17 million for Lala and since they had $14 million in cash, the “rest” of the company was only valued at $3 million.  If this information is accurate, it would lend to the idea that Apple is purchasing companies like this for the engineering talent and experience. 

Apple purchased a similar-size organization called PlaceBase earlier this year.  There is some speculation that this purchase was a talent-based purchase as well, as the company had some financial issues.