Just like almost every other DRM-based music store before them, Wal-Mart has announced that they will be shutting down their DRM servers as of October 9th, killing off any music you have purchased from the retailer, unless you burn the music to CD and then rip it back DRM-free.
The full email from the Wal-Mart team is as follows:
From: Walmart Music Team
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com
Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases
We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart’s MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have offered only DRM (digital rights management) -free MP3s since February 2008. As the final stage of our transition to a full DRM-free MP3 download store, Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site.
If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.
Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.
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Result for: mp3 download
After Real announced yesterday that it was opening up a DRM-free MP3 Rhapsody store, Verizon followed with an announcement of their own.
The company will be expanding its VCast Music service to allow MP3 downloads as well as the new Rhapsody service, meaning mobile users can download as much music as they want for $15 USD a month. Individual tracks can still be purchased for 99 cents and moved from a PC to the phone via a USB cable.
The new service expansion will work with 7 of Verizon’s current phones and 3 that are coming soon. Verizon already has a similar subscription deal with Napster.
The new deal should help Verizon and Real compete with the dominant market leader Apple whose iTunes platform recently hit 5 billion song downloads.
Result for: mp3 download
The music download store 7digital.com is reporting that since the introduction of DRM-free music from the labels Warner and EMI, sales have skyrocketed over 300 percent propelling the site into second place behind Apple iTunes as the UK’s biggest digital retailer.
Year on year download sales were up 300 percent for the year ended June 30th 2008, with CEO Ben Drury adding, “High-quality, DRM-free MP3 downloads have really sparked a new wave of digital music take up.”
Drury also notes that the MP3 format offers superior compatibility to DRM-crippled WMA files or Apple’s use of AAC and for that reason, many users are moving to the site.
80 percent of 7digital.com’s catalog is now DRM-free, (representing over 3 million songs) leading Drury to add, “It is now clear that MP3 downloads represent the future for digital music. With two of the four major labels now supporting MP3 in the UK, we expect to see the whole market supporting MP3 in the not-too-distant future.”
