Daily Slice

When we last visited Wal-Mart’s attempt at DRM-free music, they had only managed to get EMI and Universal Music Group signed up for the DRM-free portion of their store. They’ve now decided to go all-MP3, but they’re still stuck without Warner Music Group and Sony BMG, which are unfortunately the top two record labels.

Most likely they will eventually match Amazon MP3, which has all four major record labels signed, but it’s surprising that Wal-Mart made this move without working out deals - and that they haven’t been able to work out a deal since August. When Amazon MP3 launched it was understandable that they were missing labels, as they vowed to be all MP3 from the start, but Wal-Mart?

The store redesign means that only those with IE can use the new store; others using, for example, Firefox are greeted with the following message:

We notice you’re not using Internet Explorer. Other browsers may be able to access our original Music Downloads store which has fewer user features than our latest version but offers the same music. We will be making enhancements to our updated version in the future to support the Firefox browser. If you want to take advantage of all the features in our updated design now, please get the latest version of Internet Explorer.

Of course, since Firefox is my browser of choice, I fell back on IE Tab.

No Mac or Linux support for their download app; in fact, Linux isn’t even mentioned, and for Mac their site says: "At this time, it isn’t possible to shop and download songs directly from
Wal-Mart Music Downloads to a Macintosh computer. However, you can transfer the MP3 files from a Windows computer to a Macintosh using a CD or other storage device."

How convenient for end users!