It's months later and this STILL ticks me off, but now there's more fuel to the fire:
Apple's Lala purchase appears to have been "insurance"
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/was-apples-lala-purchase-just-insurance.arsQuoteAccording to the execs speaking to FT, Apple likened its long-rumored plans to bring iTunes to the cloud as "insurance." Instead of cannibalizing its own wildly successful download service by introducing a streaming equivalent, Apple said it plans to make it possible for existing iTunes users to store their music remotely. This would enable them to access their libraries from various devices without having to sync via USB.
Incidentally, this model is exactly what streaming music service Lala began offering in 2007...
I'd quote my spoiler above as it's still accurate, but that would be obscene/profane/true/sigh...