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Wal-Mart Relaunches Online Music Store
ack154 writes "The latest competitor in the paid music download business will now open its 'doors,' as Walmart begins selling songs at 88 cents online. It had recently finished a three month testing period and now will open to everyone. According to CNN, however, they don't care so much about selling music, 'Analysts have said the goal for Wal-Mart is to bring more people to its Web site.' Maybe they're taking cue from Apple in trying to sell something (iPod) else by using a music store? Articles can be found at Reuters, CNN and others."
amichalo points out that this is really a re-entry, writing "The service was previously launched last December. No explanation as to the re-launch (cough-poor-sales-cough) other than the addition of exclusive artists."
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
With $250B in sales, that's $1k for every man, woman, and child in the US. So for the $3k they should get from my family (and won't) some other family is giving them $6k this year to make up for me not giving them a dime. It's staggering how huge they are.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
"Wow. 88 cents a song for [Clean] versions of pop tunes which I can't play on my iPod, my Linux box, or most MP3 players? Hang on while I rush out to buy the latest version of XP and a supported portable WMA device so I can save 11 cents a song! I'll be right back!
What I'm amazed at is that Walmart was able to beat enough price out of someone to lower the selling price by 12%. My guess is that the extra is coming out of the credit card companies who were probably told by Walmart that they better lower their charges or Wally World would start issueing their own credit cards that could be used at all Walmart locations, Sam's Clubs, and at the online store. Losing even a couple percent of Walmarts $250 Billion in revenue is enough to scare any corporation. I say this only because I doubt even Walmart could squeeze profit out of the record companies.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If i want to save 12 cents i get to:
a) use a browser instead of the top class itunes store.
b) i get to use some handcuff microsoft monoply DRM schema instead of the aptly named "Fairplay" DRM from itunes.
c) I don't get to use their music with the number 1 (and coolest and functional) selling mp3 player in the world.
d) i can't buy music if i use a mac.
e) I get to add the to the walmart-fication of american which in my opinion is a mindset is destroying the quality of life in america?
I'd rather spend the 12 cents....
and BTW i have bought about 250 songs from the itunes music store....best music experience online...
Regardless of whether or not they censor albums, they will have, at best, the same meager ridiculous selection that every other service has.
Every time a new legal online-music appears, I take a look for the music that I like to listen to (Failure, Sneaker Pimps, etc; check my audioscrobbler if you're curious). Granted, they aren't exactly mainstream pop, but they aren't that uncommon. I still haven't found a service that reliably has some of those lesser-known artists (I just checked Wal-Mart's site, and they are no exception). If I'm going to do online music, then the selection had better be about as good as Amazon's.
Wal-Mart could make a killing if it offered kiosks in its stores where you could download and burn music. There are a lot of people who don't use computers, are ignorant about computers, who don't own burners, etc, but would LOVE to buy various CDs of their favorite songs.
And Wal-Mart could force the music industry to go along with the deal. If some label refused, Wal-Mart could simply refuse to stock their entire catalog. No label could survive being shutout by Wal-Mart!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I find it rather amusing that according to this website, Wal-Mart's 88 cents per track price point "...will be minimized by sales taxes that apply to customers that have a Wal-Mart in their state."
:)
Another reason, among many, to keep using the iTunes Music Store. 50 million downloads and counting.
Keep in mind the probable reason behind this move. Wal-Mart is not looking to make money on these songs. That's why they can offer them for $.88 instead of $.99. They're looking to drive website hits, which in turn drives web revenue through other products.
There are on-going battles with Wal-Mart and the major credit card brands (old article here). They recently stopped allowing customers who use a MasterCard branded debit card to use the card as a credit card (ie, sign the receipt instead of enter a PIN). This fight is much bigger than anything to do with the on-line music sales, in my humble opinion.
Don't expect Wal-Mart to try and take over the on-line music industry. It doesn't fit their model very well. As others have said, the real challenge for Apple will come when the likes of Amazon.com or others with true on-line business models enter the fray. For the store based retailer, it's simply a good way of driving additional customers to the website, where traffic translates into sales.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
So, not everything Walmart touches turns to crap.
But what about the day that Wal-Mart has put all the mom-n-pop video stores out of business, and I decided I wanted to rent the Criterion Collection DVD of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai? I don't think this DVD qualifies Wal-Mart's 98% sell-through rate required to be sold there.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Why would you pay sales tax? They're not selling you anything. For a fee, you have permission to use the IP in a restricted way. This fee is not a sale.
You can't even resell the download you pay for as it's forbidden in their terms of service! If I can't sell it, I don't own it. If I don't own it, they didn't sell it to me. If they didn't sell it to me, theres no sale to tax.
You don't pay sales tax on your apartment rent, do you?
Everybody who buys a lot of hardware knows this (especially professional contractors, who have relationships with those stores), so your little Concord hardware store is in no danger of going away, as long as their service excels.
Commodities like clothing, food, drugs, etc., nobody gives a crap where they buy it as long as it's cheap. A small store adds little or no value. In fact, when it comes to food, a massive supermarket like Cub or Rainbow is more likely to have high-quality produce that's at the peak of freshness, because they turn around their inventory so much more quickly.
Wal-Mart brought the fantastic benifits of "economy of scale" that we city-dwellers have always enjoyed to small hick towns which used to have to pay a premium for everything, and that's why several of the richest 10 people in America are from the Walton family.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.