Walmart: all your music are belong to us

Davey Winder
Sunday, 28 September 2008 16:00

Business IT - Networking

Certainly you would like to think that customer service matters, especially in the hugely competitive market that is the 'someone other than Apple selling music downloads' business.

Thinking and doing are two different things, and Walmart seem to be quite happy to slam the support door in the faces of early DRM protected customers.

Indeed, Walmart state quite clearly that from that October 9th "we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files."

The advice is to back them up by burning to CD, of course, but that will be small comfort to anyone who doesn't get the email, who is away for a month, who doesn't have the time to burn six months worth of music downloads.

Walmart is basically switching off the DRM servers when, as far as anyone can tell, it would be pretty trivial to keep them up just in the name of good service. Especially to those loyal customers who were buying during that initial six months of opening.

Why trivial? Well Walmart has not sold any DRM protected WMA tracks since February so there is no real maintenance involved, just an authorisation server that sits there and occasionally does its stuff.

"We are working hard to make our store better than ever and easier to use" Walmart says. I somehow doubt those early customers agree, and it is certainly not a fairy tale ending.

Some might say that the conclusion of this matter brings a rather odd definition to the word 'protection' as well...