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Walmart closing down its digital music store

by Mike Schramm Aug 10th 2011 at 7:30PM

Walmart is shuttering its digital music store on August 29, the company announced this week. The store was introduced to the public on March 23, 2004, and made a valiant effort at competing with iTunes, often offering up songs for even cheaper than Jobs and Apple were able to make them on iTunes. Unfortunately, Walmart stubbornly clung to the Windows market, offering songs as WMA files laden with Microsoft's DRM, unplayable on the iPod even as that music player saw astronomic growth.

Walmart's always been a huge player in terms of music sales, but with digital music growth higher than ever and physical media at an all-time low, the company's influence has waned quite a bit. And closing down the digital store means they're more or less surrendering to iTunes' superiority. Not that Walmart itself is in trouble at all -- we hear they still sell a lot more than music.



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Walmart is shuttering its digital music store on August 29, the company announced this week. The store was introduced to the public on...
 

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Miraa

Funny, it was this issue w/ Windows DRM "PlaysForSure" that drove me to buy an iPod & use iTunes. After I could no longer transfer purchased music to my Creative Nomad mp3 player, I got so frustrated that I went out & bought a 30GB iPod. I had just lost confidence that MS DRM would continue support for my music.

Eventually the halo-effect got me. I liked my iPod so much that I eventually bought a Macbook--which then led to me replacing my desktop w/ a Mac Mini. Now, in my household, we have had: 4 Mac computers, 4 iPhones, 4 iPods, an iPad & an AppleTV 2. Of course, this isn't all due to Windows DRM, but it was a contributing factor that ushered me down this path.

The lesson should be that companies that make software decisions that alter usability had better think very hard about whether they intend to support the decisions long-term, and whether those decisions help the user be a better consumer. MS didn't, and look at all the sales they lost just from one home, not just devices, but vertical sales as well.

August 11 2011 at 1:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
xxp84

I see that they eventually "added" mp3 format, but are all the folks who bought WMA files now going to stop being able to play them after they shut down the DRM servers? Sad. They should give them refunds.

August 10 2011 at 9:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jose

I'm sure Walmart is "shuttering" but not its digital music store. I'm sure they are just "shutting" that one down.

August 10 2011 at 8:51 PM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jose's comment
yrthegood1staken

Sorry Jose, the usage here is accurate.

If by chance you were looking for the synonym for 'shaking', it's spelled 'shuddering'.

August 11 2011 at 8:26 AM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
Brandon Leon

Wait, Wal-Mart had a Digital music store???

August 10 2011 at 7:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Doctor

I'm not sure you can state that Wal-Mart "surrendered to iTunes' superiority," as much as Microsoft has failed overall with their WMA codec. Had Wal-Mart been selling pure mp3s (like Amazon), they'd still be in the business.

August 10 2011 at 7:50 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Doctor's comment
orkenstein

"Walmart eventually expanded its downloads store to include DRM-free MP3s in August 2007...[then in] October 2008...rebooted its MP3 store and slashed prices to start at just 74 cents a track"

From the article, which Mike Schramm linked to but apparently didn't read.

August 10 2011 at 8:20 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
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