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."

Comments

...but do they censor the online stuff too?

[Penguinisto]

After all, Wal-Mart does have a habit of "editing" certain CD's for language content and such... did they do the same to their online versions as well?

given the power that walmart has...

[wankledot]

I wouldn't be surprised if they were paying a LOT less per track to the labels than Apple, etc. are. Walmart is by far the most powerful force in retail, selling more CDs than anyone in the country. They can dictate to their supliers exactly what they want to pay, and they will always play ball. I'm sure they are capable of making more money than most other online stores for that simple reason. For an interesting look at Walmart's pricing, look around on the web for the article on the 1 gallon jar of pickles from Vlassic.

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.