Wal-Mart's relationship with music vending has been somewhat tenuous of late. They lost the number one spot for Music sales to i-tunes, they bludgeoned major record labels with a new pricing scheme, and they dumped a ton of their online music library.
Now, they seem to be putting more emphasis on online sales, having just sealed a deal with Warner Music Group to vastly expand their music offerings. One wonders how much of this move is due to a bruised ego over losing to an online service.
hyperbot has the story:
WalMart Adds WMG MP3's. Napster Next?The Warner Music Group family of labels has widened its full catalog mp3 offering to include WalMart.com. Previously Amazon was the only North American based download provider with the catalog.
Hypebot reported yesterday that WMG was about to broaden its DRM-free program to include other sites. Last month WalMart drop all tracks from WMG, Universal and Sony BMG and took its digital store DRM-free. EMI and a limited number of indies provided content until this morning when WMG effectively doubled WalMart.com's catalog.
As it does at brick and morter, WalMart is competing on price with all tracks a 94 cents (up from 88 cents last month) and album downloads from $7.98 - $9.22. (By contrast iTunes generally prices at $.99 track/$9.99 album and Amazon's offers variable pricing that is occasionally lower than WalMart but often hits $.99/$9.99.) Indie music plays only a minor role on WalMart.com also mimicing in-store content.WMG's move puts pressure on the other label groups and download stores to move more rapidly towards all DRM-free. At yesterday's Digital NARM, a spokesperson for Napster hinted that they would go DRM-free within a month.
Posted by Taylor - May 7, 2008 12:47 PM - In The News