Wal-Mart Takes On iTunes W/DRM Free For Cheap
08.22.07 - 10:31am
Wal-Mart is going head-to-head against iTunes by offering DRM free tunes for less than the online industry leader.
Wal-Mart is number one in the music selling industry including CD’s and wants to be number one in online music downloads as well. They have decided to step out with a bang by doing what Wal-Mart does best - offer goods for less than other retailers.
Their on-line music store is doing this by offering the tunes for a measly .94 cents, only .06 cents less than iTunes normal downloads but those are DRM encoded. If you want the same DRM free ones as Wal-Mart offers you pay $1.29.
Walmart will be selling EMI’s songs DRM free something iTunes already has, but Wal-Mart also has access to the music that Universal is using to test going DRM free, a test that they excluded iTunes from.
“We definitely believe that the MP 3 format, without DRM, takes down barriers,” Kevin Swint, Wal-Mart’s senior director and divisional manager for digital media.
Parents may be more likely to buy for their children from Wal-Mart partly due to the price incentive but also due to the editing. If a recording is issued with parental advisory Wal-Mart sells the edited version.
Wal-Mart says that their tunes can be played on Apple’s iPod, the iPhone, Zune and any others as they are in standard MP3 format.
The one drawback to Wal-Mart is that while they have hundreds of thousands of songs available they still don’t compete with Apple’s 5 million. That however could change as Wal-Mart says it is in discussion with Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
Apple has not yet responded to questions on whether they will match Wal-Mart’s price for their DRM free music.
Walmart’s DRM encoded music sells for .88 cents each.
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