Walmart Downloads ...

[Saint John]

are no more. There goes Eclipse's 3 weekly downloads!

Apple Kills Another One



After eight years of quietly selling music downloads, Wal-Mart (NYS: WMT) is calling it quits. The world's largest retailer has advised distribution and licensing partners that it will close its MP3 store on Aug. 28, according to Digital Music News.

This is a surprising move on many different levels.

-Wal-Mart recently integrated its Vudu video-streaming service with walmart.com, so it would seem odd that it's throwing more promotional muscle behind one form of a la carte streaming while nixing another.

-Amazon.com has been successfully creative with its music streams. Whether it's selling Lady Gaga's new CD as a download for just $0.99 or using digital purchases to expand its fledgling cloud-based streaming platform, Amazon is proving that you can stand out in a world where Apple's iTunes rules.

-Best Buy has had a few rough quarters, yet it continues to sell online tracks. Does Wal-Mart really want to let Best Buy be the only bricks-and-mortar chain directly selling digital downloads?

Amazon is now selling movies, music, books, and software online. If Wal-Mart truly wants to compete with Amazon, it can't afford to fall behind.
Digital music is apparently popular, judging by the initial excitement over Pandora Media's IPO and Spotify's stateside launch.

Wal-Mart's MP3 page is still not advising shoppers of its pending closure, so there may be time for the discounter to change its mind.

Wal-Mart tried to set itself apart from Apple and Amazon by selling music at a slight discount to the larger e-tailers. Offering songs at $0.64, $0.94, and $1.24 price points should have been a draw to young penny-pinching listeners. However, whether it's that the Wal-Mart brand just wasn't cool enough for music tracks or that folks are just more glued to the iTunes interface than they would care to admit, the department-store chain just wasn't able to compete on price alone.

Music fans are finicky. No surprise there. Wal-Mart hangs it up just as the digital-music scene is getting good? Now that is a big surprise.

[brandonx76]

Do non tech savy people really use another service other than iTunes and Ipods to purchase MP3s? That surprises me - I don't know of anyone else offering another integrated solution like theres...I haven't purchased any mp3s from Walmart but I'd imagine it was probably a clunky interface...same with Amazon

[Don]

"Buy our Album at Wal-Mart."

Remember the first two days when Eclipse wasn't even available for download at Wal-Mart and the band inexplicably didn't tell anyone about it being available on Amazon?

[belar]

I prefer CDs, but the music I do buy digitally all comes from Amazon.

[Starrider]

Here is the email Walmart sent out:

Dear Walmart Shopper,

As a valued music download customer at Walmart.com, we're writing to inform you that we'll no longer offer this service as of August 29, 2011.

You will still be able to enjoy the digital music you purchased and downloaded from Walmart.com. Your complete purchase history and the ability to authorize/deauthorize any DRM-protected WMA files you may have purchased is currently available until August 29 at http://mp3.walmart.com and, after we close the service, will be available again beginning September 12. Any MP3 files you purchased from Walmart can be moved to multiple new computers, as usual.

If you have credit left on an MP3 Music Gift Card that you've used in the past, we will send a Walmart eGift Card of equal value to this email address automatically. No action is required on your part to receive this eGift card, which will be sent to you by September 12.

If you have an MP3 Music Gift Card that you haven't used, we will provide you a chance to convert them. Please visit http://mp3.walmart.com on or after September 12 to redeem your current gift card for a Walmart.com eGift Card of equal value, which can be used as cash to purchase any available items from Walmart.com.

For more information about how to use the music files you've purchased, or to ask any other questions about this service, please contact our customer service team at: musicdownloads@walmart.com.

We appreciate your continued business with Walmart.com and look forward to serving you in the future.

Sincerely,
Your Walmart.com Customer Service Team
http://www.walmart.com

[Greg]

Buy vinyl!

Seriously, I had a few technical issues with Wal-Mart. Only seemed to work well with IE.

[Don]

I guess they were having a hard time getting "Made In China" embedded into each download.

[Abitaman]

From what I read at another sight Walmart is closing it for a month. Then reopening doing just mp3 format and not the others (wma etc)