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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."
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Are they offering the music in Ogg Vorbis format? That would rock!
It was only a matter of time before the price wars started. I had always thought that Apple's 99 cents per song was higher than necessary though, not unbearable. Now Walmart answers with 88 cents. I'd speculate that thet'll be going for 50 cents by Christmas.
Hey, where'd my key go???
I would hope they would do something like Apple's iTunes -- offer both censored and uncensored versions of songs online. Even better, allow parents to set limits on their kids, so those who want their kids to have censored lyrics can have it, and people can go there for the prices without getting other peoples morales pushed on them.
But will I be able to return the song if I don't like it?
If so, how do I do it?
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
Can someone recommend one that sells "mp3's" as opposed to WMA crap?
I have an older archos hard drive based multimedia jukebox and it doesn't do WMA's...
thanks,
*shrug*
e.
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When a family in Kansas makes $50k a year, and 1/3 of that goes to the mortgage, and another 2/3 goes to general household expenses, that's ... .6 * 50... $30k that Walmart has a good shot at getting its hands on. Food, Clothes, Car parts, you name it, Walmart is the logical place to spend your money, they have the best prices.
What that family doens't realize is that walmart is the reason that half the small businesses in their little town are gone, and people are out of work. Of course, walmart will be happy to give you a job at minimum wage with no benefits to replace that job they took away from you. And people eat it up because they have a sale on tube socks today. 12 pair for $2.99!@# The price they pay for low priced products is the loss of small business, loss of jobs, and massive cost-saving consolidation across the entire retail sector in the US. Good for walmart, good for the country, right?
When the supplier goes out of business walmart creates its own store brand and sells that. And that's the stick they can hold above any supplier's head "we'll just make it ourselves." So do you sell at almost a loss to walmart, or lose 1/2 of your sales for the year overnight by standing up to them?
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
So if you like bubblegum pop, hiphop, and country, Wal-Marts the place to shop. Otherwise, no dice.
Instead of "hiphop" you should have said "Will Smith and Sisqo". Real hip hop is uncensored.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Its kind of weird how I haven't heard anything yet about Amazon's Music service.
Everything is free (legal, but selection isvery limited, no uniform media-format) and they allow anyone to upload their own music to be downloaded by others.
From site:
What file format do Music Downloads come in?
Music Downloads from Walmart.com are 128-bit WMA files. The WMA format allows record companies to protect their music by using Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption. This means that music downloads are legal, safe, and easy to use. The 128-bit WMA files also offer superior sound quality.
So you have to use Windows, accept DRM, and pay for a lossy song format? I'm gonna have to quote Triumph The Insult Comic Dog here, "Hear that? That is the sound of no one giving a shit."
"Note: Music downloads from Walmart.com will not play on the Apple Macintosh or Linux operating systems." according to the Wal mart notice on their sample download. So I tried it anyway. The wma file downloaded and played straight away in MPlayer. I'm on a mac. Are they lying, or is MPlayer magic or what?
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
I'd like to know who is getting the screw job from Wal*Mart due to the $0.88 price tag they are offering their songs at?
Why do I ponder this? Because Apple isn't making profits off $0.99 per song because they have to pay for the micropayments to the credit card companies, the large cut to the RIAA, the cut to the record label, the hosting fees, and finally, the artist.
So am I to believe the RIAA cut its staggering cut to appease Wal*Mart? Was it the individual labels? (doubtful) Or did the artist lose out yet again?
If Apple can't clobber Wal*Mart, I will root for Sony...and I will feel odd doing so.
btw: isn't this a bad idea to sell WMA formatted songs on walmart.com when their great selling Linux PCs won't be able to take part in such a business endeavor?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
It's sort of a chicken and egg problem. Walmart sells cheap crap because the masses want it (American's are notoriously short sighted) we buy new clothing every year, Europeans tend to buy 1 or 2 really nice things to add to their wardrobe each year. Wal~Mart's big secret isn't so much that they decided to sell a bunch of cheap crap it's that they were better able to capture their retail sales data into useful decision making info. I think the fast company article (might have been a businessweek article from about the same time on WalMart) mentioned that the company dropped the buy American campaign when they found that in many cases two widgets would be sold one made in China might cost 5%-10% less than the Made in the USA one, and sales were considerably lower.
Another big thing is that Wal~Mart does do a better job of ensuring that things they need are there all the time. A big part of that is they let people in the store monitor and order additional (they also give them years of weekly data on how each of their SKUs sold for the upcoming week. A friend works at Safeway and stuff arrives in Montana as shipped from Seattle with no input to Montana's desires or thoughts. There are many examples of things like this which start to explain why Walmart did so well initally.
I have no good answers as two why Americans love Wal~Mart so much. Take food for example, their produce looks awful, and generally rots much faster than the same bought at a traditional grocer. Also the offer significantly lower selection of brands within a product category. Safeway might have 10 brands and 30 varieties of maple syrup walmart carries 3 and 8. I prefer the added selection and quality and do my shopping at safeway. Well that and I get tired of the wild kids and long lines at walmart. But it seems that others don't have the same preference set.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Roxio (Napster) has an interesting setup at Target these days.
Across the isle from the traditional CD's and around the corner from Apple's iPod display including cool $15 pre-paid iTMS gift cards sits Roxio's marketing "all in".
They have branded Napster pre-paid cards (at $14.85 vs. Apple'
s $15 pre paid card, though you do get $15.00 worth of single tracks or full albums) as well as "Napster brand" blank CD's (perfect for audio burning) and even CD cases for your car, complete with the Napster Kitty logo.
I think this is brlliant myself. They are making Napster the Brand - so everytime you pull out that burned CD, today, tomorrow, two years from now, you remember you got that crap for $99 a track off Napster.com. Plus, they are sure to make better margins off their re-branded merchandise than on their $0.99 music.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.