Walmart Bails on Music Downloads

[HolidayGuy]

Obviously, it could not compete with iTunes- and maybe even Amazon, I guess.

www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/94927/walmart-bails-on-music-downloads?ref=mail_recap

Walmart Bails On Music Downloads
August 10, 2011 at 6:32 AM (PT)

In the race for music download supremacy, WALMART is crying "uncle," pulling out of the competition with iTUNES and AMAZON by shutting the virtual doors on the WALMART MUSIC DOWNLOADS STORE.

According to a company statement, "After eight years in business, the WALMART MUSIC DOWNLOADS STORE will close on AUGUST 28, 2011. All content in the Store will be disabled and no longer available for download from the store."

WALMART was selling current MP3s for as little as 88 cents, as opposed to iTUNES 99 cent pricing, with catalog downloads for 74 cents per track. WALMART still plans to sell actual physical CDs at all of its stores and online, and its WALMART SOUNDCHECK streaming site will remain in operation online.

[Au$tin]

Wow. Had no idea it was doing so poorly.

[ClevelandRox]

WalMart and it's music has been dead to me since I grew up in a small town with no other stores in a 30 mile radius... and all their CD's were edited. Good riddance.

[Peaches. [Ch, r. is]]

I didn't even know they sold mp3 downloads

[Deleted]

Aug 17, 2011 15:04:48 GMT -5 Peaches. [Ch, r. is] said:

I didn't even know they sold mp3 downloads

[newpower99]

Walmart had a download store?


I guess I see what the problem was.

[HolidayGuy]

I was aware of it, but never utilized it. A few years back, some act (Nickelback?) had one of its digital singles as a Walmart-exclusive for a time.

[esoteric76]

I bought a few tracks from them, because I'll take a savings wherever I can get it, but iTunes is just easier and that won out for me.

[Chelsea Press 2]

I had bought from Walmart's download store years ago (2004). At that time, all the files were in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format and they had DRM which prevented you from playing it on certain devices, copying it to another format. iTunes had the DRM for their files too. But the WMA one just felt more restrictive.

The buying experience was not pleasant. The website needed to be refreshed constantly and then when you finally completed a purchase, it didn't go through sometimes. I would have purchased the song elsewhere, but none of the other stores at the time had it as that particular label and release was apparently exclusive to Walmart. It was those Piper remixes of Wynonna Judd's cover of "I Want To Know What Love Is." Her label has since made all of their releases available at other digital stores. I never purchased again from Walmart's digital store for those reasons.