Wal-Mart MP3 store relaunches

Correction: AC/DC's 1981 album For Those About to Rock We Salute You peaked at #1 on the U.S. charts, which means Wal-Mart's press release is wrong.

American retail giant Wal-Mart relaunched its online MP3 store Tuesday, and it's a worthy competitor to Amazon in the DRM-free MP3 sweepstakes. (To remind you: unlike many songs from Apple's iTunes, or Microsoft's Zune Marketplace, or Nokia's music store, every song sold on Amazon and Wal-Mart can be played an unlimited number of times on just about any portable device and in any software application out there.)

The new Wal-Mart store includes top hits at only 74 a cents per song, with standard pricing at 94 cents (a nickel cheaper than most), plus a free download of the week (hopefully it won't always be kids' music), plus one free MP3 download for every full physical album that you buy either in the store or on the Web site starting in November.

Highlights of Wal-Mart's relaunched MP3 store include exclusives, a free song of the week, and selected downloads for only $0.74

(Credit: Screenshot)

But no AC/DC. If you're of a certain age and musical predeliction, you probably already know that AC/DC's new album, Black Ice, is available only at Wal-Mart--but not as a download. You might have checked out the new single, "Rock and Roll Train," for its first minute or two. But you probably would never have guessed that Black Ice has just become AC/DC's second album to top the U.S. charts, showing that big old rock bands don't need none of that digital computer stuff anyhow. At least they have a sense of humor about it.

[Dalkorian]

Selling your soul for 3 minutes of music is no way to go through life son. *****-mart is the plague of the 21 century and desperately needs to be burned to the ground. Anyone who shops there should be FORCED to work there for the rest of their lives.

[GameboyHippo]

Are you crazy? Why does everyone assume that Wal-Mart is the end all most evil place to work. I worked there throughout college and it's not nearly as bad as everyone says it is. Sure you don't get paid as much as a job that requires a college degree, but nobody's complaining about how much McDonald workers are paid either. I'm personally getting tired of these attacks on WalMart. It baffles me that people think that WalMart workers should get $20+ an hour. If that was true, then I should have never went to college, become a programmer, and work my way up to Senior Programmer. It's hard to imagine, but perhaps the jobs you have to work harder for to get should be paid more.

[furisdelicious]

Please explain in greater detail why it is a plague, and when you have come up with an answer; you can then that it is no more evil any other American company.

[dennisobell]

'Black Ice' will be AC/DC's second No. 1 U.S. album. The first was 1981's 'For Those About to Rock, We Salute You' (ironically, one of their lesser-loved discs, but it had the good fortune to be their first studio release after the massive 'Back in Black').<br /><br />You might want to fix your story above.<br /><br />-Chris Molanphy, chart columnist, Idolator.com

[MattRosoff]

Good catch. Shouldn't have trusted Wal-Mart's press release. <br />That is a horrible record. Bon Scott ruled, and "Back in Black" was great, but after that...phew.

[Travis Ernst]

Wally World site, originally was for WINDOWS ONLY. It had hiccups with iPods when they first launched the site; so a lot of people avoided the site. I didn't see any of these issues mentioned here. Anybody know?<br /><br />Wal-Mart WAS DRM encoded before their relaunch. iTunes went DRM free a number of years ago. All NEW songs from that point on were free of the encoding. They may have some antique songs on there that still have DRM but usually people choose if they want the encoded or not. MOST are DRM free. That part is misleading about iTunes.<br /><br />I looked at Wally's selection and it was minimal back then. I don't want pop or rap or country. I tried digging up an album from well known national artists (Dylan, John Prine) and was striking out with only a few. You don't get my respect if I can't find Lefty Wilbury's albums.

[bobjr94]

I have been getting everything from Amazon mp3 for a while now and they have alot of music. I dont know of wallmart is to late on the game now. When you buy full albums at amazon the price can be alot less then 94 cents per song.

[JimMcDish]

Outstanding. WalMart always seems to be on the leasding edge!<br /><br />Jiff<br />www.online-anonymity.kr.tc

[markhn]

After a recent rebranding and updating of its logo, the company is now called Walmart, not Wal-Mart or WalMart. Please look at the screen grab of the website that's part of this article to confirm the fact.

[Zeeshan47]

predilection, not predeliction.<br />Walmart on the leading edge? Hilarity ensues. &lt;--a blatant use of engrish, if it wasn't obvious

[Dorian-M]

Thank you for such a concise and informative post. I appreciate the fact that you reported on such a current and relevant issue that affects the way the consumers are able to obtain their music in today's digital music age. You decided to write about the relaunch of Wal-Mart's MP3 store, which in the past used to be one of the biggest music stores available to the consumer. Not until recently when they decided to close their online store, did consumers learn about the negative aspects of owning digital songs as opposed to actual CD's. When Wal-Mart decided to close their MP3 store, they decided to keep their DRM system in place for a couple of months but within the last 2 months they decided to turn off that system which would mean that thousands of songs that consumers had bought would become useless. This caused a huge uproar and Wal-Mart later decided to not turn off that DRM system to allow users to had legally bought those songs to keep them and still be working. Do you believe that after Wal-Mart received all that negative publicity and all those letters from the consumers, they realized how big of a market digital music sales really is, and is that the reason they decided to relaunch their MP3 store? In your post you also mentioned that they are offering top hits at only 74 cents per song but standard pricing would be 94 cents, which is still cheaper than most other online stores. Do you believe that they are doing this in order to steer customers away from the iTunes music store and Amazon music store? And how do you think iTunes and Amazon will react to this new pricing strategy introduced by Wal-Mart? You made a very clear point when you mentioned that AC/DC's new album was exclusive being distributed by Wal-Mart, yet their new album was not available in their online store. Do you believe that this is the cause of AC/DC's own management ideas or Wal-Mart prefers to keep those highly anticipated albums in their brick and mortar stores only to increase foot traffic. Wal-Mart also tends to have a very negative image among many people because of how they have made small business go bankrupt and their use of cheap labor in other countries. Would this negative image keep consumers from using their new online store even though it's cheaper? I would like to see a follow up post that shows if Wal-Mart's new music store is successful and how it compares to the other big online music stores.