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Wal-Mart Music Download Service Launches
nns6561 writes "Wal-Mart launched their music download service today. They are providing wma files for 88 cents. I was able to download and play the test file with MPlayer and Linux. Finally, a music service for us geeks." While it may be only another online music seller, I'd hazard a guess that Wal-Mart has the name recognition to be the most prevalent music download service, especially among the tech-unsavvy.
They seem to be a bit less restrictive than Napster2.
From their usage agreement:
You may download music to a single computer. You may then transfer music files and backup license files to up to two (2) additional personal computers. You may play music an unlimited number of times on up to three (3) personal computers. You shall be entitled to 1) burn Products solely for personal, non-commercial use up to ten (10) times and 2) export Products solely to a portable device capable of playing Windows Media (TM) Audio ("WMA") files such as a WMA-compliant MP3 player an unlimited number of times. WALMART.COM is a reseller to you and does not accept orders from music dealers, exporters, wholesalers, any businesses of any kind or other customers who intend to resell.
Emphasis mine.Still, I won't pay for any music until I can burn it to CD in MP3 or Ogg format. My car has an MP3 player and changing CDs every hour or so has become as objectionable to me as following the speed limit.
As for the submitter's claim that wal-mart might be able to make this the "most prevalent online music service," whatever happened to the ISP that wal-mart tried to float? I rest my case.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
The test file said "Thanks for shopping at Wal-mart!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Here's what you need to play a song: A Windows PC. See all system requirements. Windows Media Player 9. Get it now for free. Approximately 10 MB of disk space on your PC. A connection to the Internet the first time you play a song. If you currently have a Windows Media Player installed on your computer, you may be prompted to update certain components of the player before you can play the song. Click here for information about installing, configuring, and troubleshooting your Windows Media Player.
Who do they think we are? This is /. by God. We shall never be held by the "requirements" of simpletons!
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
I'd never buy anything from wal-mart just because they have been a major promoter of censorship in music (and films). I suspect their online music store is the same.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Somehow I doubt Wal-Mart has "geeks" in mind as the target audience. It does not help the geek community to patronize an online music store that provides WMA files. When those WMA's start including Palladium-enriched goodness, you won't be able to play them on Linux anymore. And maybe by then, Wal-Mart and Microsoft will have put iTunes and the more legit shops out of business.
Think about the big picture. Demand MP3 and OGG files. This cannot be understated.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
wma files for 88 cents. I was able to download and play the test file with MPlayer and Linux. Finally, a music service for us geeks.
.vma files to /dev/audio and decoding the audio by ear. I mean, how geekier can you get?
Yes, huzzah and hurrah with highly polished brass knobs on. Everybody knows the vma format is the sound format of choice for true geeks. Geeks even make a point of cat-ing their
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I always wondered what WMA stood for.
they analyze their first day traffic and see Slashdot as their number one referrer, Linux i386/i686 as their number one OS, and Mozilla/Gecko as the number one browser.
So, does this mean that their music folders are going to be a complete mess like the aisles I wander down in Wal-Mart when I visit?
Will I have barefoot pregnant mothers with no front teeth jostling me so they can download "Shania Twain's Greatest Hits" first in the queue, before me?
Will my internet connection be trampled over, causing me to pass out, as a mob of people try to download the new cut price 77c song?
Boy oh boy, I can hardly wait!
It'll be about the only thing for sale at Walmart with a price that doesn't end with .99.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
1) Apple doesn't kow tow to M$ by using wma. They use their own format, with decent DRM policies. That's more than enough for me to keep using them.
2) They bundle their store with free burning/ripping/playlist software and seamlessly integrate it. The only thing Wal*Mart is good at integrating is their supply chain.
3) Apple is a company that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I buy their products. Did Wal*Mart create the first music store? No. Did Napster develop a really great MP3 player? No. Apple innovates, and that's why I like them.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
So in the interests of full disclosure the price should really be marked as "88 cents...AND YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL!"
I bet that would've messed up the formatting on their website or something though. Oh well.
128 bit encrypted WMA which they claim is "CD Quality." You can't send them as gifts (which sounds like a cool idea now that they mention it). The says
All rights in the Products are owned by WALMART.COM or its licensors and you have only a limited, nontransferable, nonexclusive, revocable, nonsublicensable right to use the Products for personal use in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.
According to this:s ervlet/ TourServlet?pageIndex=1
e rvlet/ TourServlet?pageIndex=0
http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/
Macs are out!
Yet this page has a screenshot from a mac!
http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/s
http://saveie6.com/
Their FAQ says:
That would seem to imply that your tunes are limited to one PC only - unless they're referring to casual sharing.I wonder how much attention they're paying to what they are throwing online. Here's a sound effects CD for 88 cents per effect. Bizarre.
Despite the poster's enthusiasm, it is worth noting that the test file is NOT DRM-wrapped (encrypted), which is why it works on mplayer / Linux. The downloaded songs surely would require licensing.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
According to their license and usage, one can download the music to 1 computer and back up music to up to two additional computers, make 10 burns to a CD and make unlimited transfers to a portable device. That's if you use WMP 9 on a PC. I was able to download the sample song, play it *and* transcode to mp3 with VLC (too lazy to cmd-line it with other tools) on OS X with no troubles. I tried the same with a song I paid for and got nothing. VLC choked on it, MPlayer gave me no sound and WMP for OS X tried to send Safari to a web site (no doubt for the DRM part).
/. effect (it was alot faster earlier today).
I'm looking forward to seeing a thorough comparison of the quality of Wal-Mart's encoded WMA (I couldn't readily find the encoding details) and Apple's iTunes AAC. I doubt that Wal-Mart is the store of choice for audiophiles, so I'm suspecting Apple's downloads are of better quality.
iTunes wins hands down on interface, usability and reliability. I can't see Wal-Mart's web-only interface winning them any converts. And, as I was checking back just a couple seconds ago, it appeared to be just starting to feel some pain from the
The potential "problem" is price. 88 cents is hard to beat, especially when folks are downloading Britney Spears latest pop hits (again, not the audiophile audience). I suspect Wal-Mart *is* making money, if only because they are leveraging their position as the number one retailer. "Want us to carry alot of copies your new album in our store? Then, you'll let us put your song on our online service and let us make money there too!"
Right now, as a Mac user, I just blew 88 cents on a song I'll never be able to hear. They lost a *potential* customer by locking my platform out. That may be their biggest downfall.
Mind the gap...
Wal-Mart can probably leverage their sales of CDs in B&M stores to get a much better royalty rate than apple could ever dream of. That's what they do with all their products.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Wal-mart: We plan on selling music online, we plan on giving you 40c per download
Record label: NO! We want 75c per song
Wal-mart: fine we will stop selling your music in our stores
record label: err.. damn.. fine 40c it is then
thats how wal-mart works
I know plenty of lower income families who shop at Walmart and haven't heard of Asians.
You've never met a Walmart customer, have you? Not people that go to Walmart to buy condoms and liquor at 2 in the morning, I mean customers. The psychotic women who take 5 kids down there every other day. They recoil in horror at a $0.06 markup on the one fucking jar of pickles they buy a year. They're caught in the Cult of Walmart, and they will ford a river with a dozen fucking oxen to save $0.10 on little Susie's shitty Linkin Park song. And if Susie points out the free would be even cheaper? Then Susie is fucking wrong, goddamnit, because nothing is cheaper than Walmart, you hear me? NOTHING!
(random groups selected from the family music library...)
....
:)
Dio:
ITMS - three full release albums from Dio (including an album from '96 that I'd never heard about) - no hits from his stints in Deep Purple or Black Sabbath, oddly enough, or any Dio albums as old as what I own
WMMS - a "Very Best of Dio" album, and two compilation albums with a track from Dio
Iron Maiden:
ITMS - twenty-four albums (including several duplicated "special edition" albums - assuming to be edited)
WMMS - also twenty-four albums, but you can see "remastered" and "limited edition remastered" for most of the album names, so the total number of availble albums is lower than at ITMS
Manowar:
ITMS - three albums
WMMS - Amazingly enough, one album: "Fighting The World". which is also on ITMS
Duran Duran:
ITMS - eight full albums, one partial album
ITMS also has the only album relased by Arcadia, which was several of the D^2 boys post-band split
WMMS - five albums, as well as several compilation album hits
WMMS also carries the Arcadia album
Kate Bush:
ITMS - four albums, plus one hit on a compilation
WMMS - four albums, plus hits on three compilations / soundtracks - wow, Kate Bush is in GTA: Vice City? Who knew?
ABBA (hey, they're the wife's LPs, not mine!):
ITMS - fourteen albums
WMMS - twenty(!) albums - though the same caveat about "remastered" applies, there were a few albums that ITMS didn't have listed
And, just for testing's sake (and since I'm on a roll), a few things not in the house:
Slayer:
ITMS - eight albums, and one hit from a NASCAR album(?)
WMMS - two compilation hits - the NASCAR one, and a soundtrack from WCW
Spike Jones:
ITMS - three full albums, and three compilation hits
WMMS - one album, and three compilation hits
Wu-Tang Clan:
ITMS - three full and apparently one partial album, three hits for compliations and soundtracks; slightly less than half of the ITMS tracks were labeled "explicit"
WMMS - three albums and one compilation hit, all labeled "edited", none "explicit"
John Denver:
ITMS - fifteen full albums, three partial
WMMS - umm, a lot - they listed 485 tracks, spread out over 10 screens; I couldn't find an easy way to list all the albums, or even all the tracks on one screen, like you can do with ITMS, so I stopped comparing sites at this point
So, WMMS beats out ITMS for performers like ABBA and John Denver, while ITMS excels at... most other stuff. Feel free to continue to compare / contrast... I'm going to bed
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Being the only geek here with 88 cents I went for it. Downloading was very easy. No clunky software was eneded, just download it directly from walmart after paying. Way better than any other solution (IMHO).
The results are mplayer not being able to play it. Oh well.
dan@stryker:~/Desktop$ mplayer Crash
MPlayer 1.0pre2-3.3.2 (C) 2000-2003 MPlayer Team
Playing Crash
ASF file format detected.
= ASF Stream group = START =
object size = 32
stream count=[0x1][1]
stream id=[0x1][1]
max bitrate=[0x1f67f][128639]
= ASF Stream group = END =
Clip info:
name: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
author: Crash Test Dummies
copyright: (P)&(C) 1999 Arista Label. All Rights Reserved.
=
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 16002->176400 (128.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [ffwmav2] afm:ffmpeg (DivX audio v2 (ffmpeg))
=
Checking audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 44100 hz, little endian signed int
AF_pre: 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
SDL: Samplerate: 44100Hz Channels: Stereo Format Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
AO: [sdl] 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 0.0 0.0% 0%
Exiting... (End of file)
Edited for junk filter
All things being equal (source quality, etc.), which they probably aren't, AAC should beat out WMA handily at bitrates like what the iTMS and Wal-Mart are using. The only chance WMA would have of approaching AAC in quality at that bitrate would have been if Wal-Mart had used WMA Pro, but because of the lack of hardware player support for WMA Pro, that probably won't happen soon.
I haven't seen tests directly comparing AAC to WMA (non-Pro), but Roberto Amorim's testing at 128kbps with AAC and WMA Pro and ff123's testing of a different AAC codec against WMA non-Pro probably say enough.
Also, Apple has actually spoken about the quality of the sources that they encode from (the original masters rather than CDs themselves), and Wal-Mart hasn't.
I do hope that whoever elects to actually directly compare the quality of Wal-Mart's music to Apple's doesn't just look at frequency analysis to do it. Apple's AAC lowpasses at 16 KHz, but to use this as some sort of indication of quality is ludicrous.
um...
2 yes...
3 yes...
4 yes..
5 * actually between illeagal aliens cleaning the freaken floors and 4 count them 4 women bitching about being screwed over from working there...the only media coverage I hear about wal-mart is considerably more than any other retailer and it's all bad
* Congress having no power over Wal-Mart? Are you sure? You're reading that wrong anyway...it's Congress that doesn't care to have power over Wal-mart because they are paid to not care.
* not sure about that last bit
1 You really screwed up on #1...
** "Full-Time" (actually 28 hours/week) employees only gross $11,000 a year,
on average.
* Actually at the Wal-Mart I work at everyone gets full 40 hours a week. The only time they cut back are the months Jan-March the slowest months of the year. There are a lot of older people working at wally world that have been with the company a while. 10 years ~= 15/h stocking shelves. Not that I plan on being here more than a few more months though
** Health benefits are available only after two years, but premiums are so high only 38% of employees can afford it.
* Where the hell are you getting your info from? NO! From the day you start you can get a third party health insurance. After 6 months you are qualified for health insurance...38%? Did you pull that out of your ass? It costs me 35 bucks a pay check and 3 bucks for dental...who can't afford that?
** Even discussing working conditions or unionization will result in retaliation and firing.
* I can tell you've never worked there before. No actually working conditions are talked about all the time. In fact me along with 14 other people at the Wal-Mart I'm working at all got $1 raises because we used something called the open door policy stating that other places would be paying us the same amount...it took a while but we got the raise. We talk about unions all the time...but most people agree that paying money for some union is a joke at the rate we get paid. Who will pay the bills if we HAVE to go on strike? And who needs more money taken out of their small pay check for it?
** There is "a harsh, anti-woman culture in which complaints go unanswered and the women who make them are targeted for retaliation." (Quote taken from a national class-action suit against Wal-Mart.)
* I have 2 store managers that are women and about 7 other women above me in the chain of command. Your quote is from 4 women out of how many that work at Wal-Mart? How many of the Waltons (you know the owners of Wal-Mart...there are 5 of them) are women? `
Yes Wal-Mart damages the local community and exploits labor in third world countries. However, I really doubt half the stuff you hear in the NEWS/MEDIA is in any way acurate about the realities of working there. It's a sucky job...yes. It pays crap yes. And I'm sure it will not be here more than another decade given how many people like you seam to hate it with such a passion. But despite everything that is bad about it...nah you know what there's nothing I can say good about the place...I just wanted to correct the mis-stated facts you made.
Take it from someone that works there...Wal-Mart is EVIL!!!! But it's no different from the thousands of other retailers...Cosco? K-Mart? and the job is a McJob...but what do you expect? We have to work somewhere. I suppose if places like Wal-Mart where outlawed (which they would have to be in order to prevent another one from doing the same thing) the only places left would be small mall stores...I doubt they would pay much better...it would still be another McJob.
Oh...by the way. I'm one of those CS majors from college that was a Junior before he had to take a job at Wal-Mart stocking shelves because everyone hiring required 5+ years experience.
Employees' only compulsions to work there are their own personal preferences.
Wrong. You're assuming an open availability of jobs, which doesn't exist either in the real world or any theoretical ones. The job market is terrible, especially for people who lack education or skills to get a modestly paying job (>$18000/yr).
There are several reasons a person might have to work for Wal-Mart or a supplier. They may have no useful education or job skills to work anywhere else in their area, there may be no other employer in their area that is hiring, or Wal-Mart might be (believe it or not) the highest paying employer they can work at. And before you say, "Ah, but they could move!" no, they very well may not be able to. They may lack the money to move, they may not want to remove their children from their school, they may need to care for sick/elderly friends or family members, etc.
It is possible to be "forced" to have to work somewhere. Wal-Mart knows this applies to more than a small percentage of its employees, and treats them accordingly.
Wal-Mart's low prices sustain development in third world countries.
That's an equivocation that conservatives often make. Jobs being produced in third world countries and factories being built does not mean "development" is taking place, if the jobs being created do not pay a high enough wage that employees are bettering their lives through working there, or if the factories are not running cleanly enough that they are polluting the area and causing health and environmental harm to the area.
Your points are all so easy to refute.
Tu quoque.
Apple doesn't kow tow to M$ by using wma. They use their own format, with decent DRM policies.
An additional point that is often lost on slashdot discussions is the fact that Apple's "AAC" format isn't just something they made up, nor is it something that Apple "controls." It's the audio component for the mpeg 4 standard which was created by several biggies in the industry.
Contrast this with Microsoft's "WMA" format. Who made it up? Microsoft. Who can change it any time they wish? Microsoft. Who can determine which players, companies, computers, people can play the files? Microsoft.
Do you trust Microsoft not to abuse that position? I thought not.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?