Walmart: all your music are belong to you (for now)

Davey Winder
Sunday, 12 October 2008 16:10

Business IT - Networking

When it announced that early adopters of the online music download store would lose access to tracks they had already purchased, Walmart discovered that the Internet gives consumers a very loud voice. Now it appears that Walmart is changing tune...

Just a couple of weeks ago, iTWire reported how Walmart was serving up a cheap and cheerful middle finger for customers who had purchased WMA format, DRM protected, tracks from its music download service to swivel upon.

The Walmart online music downloads store sprung into life during the summer of 2007, and within six months had arrived at the conclusion that what its customers really wanted was a totally DRM-free service.

Even those customers which had paid relatively low prices for DRM protected WMA tracks during the initial six months were happy enough with the move.

Until they got an email at the back end of September stating "Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site."

Planned to take effect from this weekend, those early and loyal customers would find themselves right royally screwed over.

Those protected WMA format tracks they had bought would no longer be transferable to other devices, or accessible if they bought a new computer or the old one crashed.

At the time we said that "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."

Certainly, it seems, that the power of the Internet and in particular news feeds and blogs matter because Walmart has changed its tune and performed a musical u-turn. Find out more on page 2...

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