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Wal-Mart Music Store Confusion

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Ok, I realize Wal-Mart is the bane of a lot of peoples’ existence. I know that plenty of people have casually (and formally) boycotted them. Shrug. I won’t judge those actions, because I understand the desire to stand up for the little guy and all of that. However, while I see the bad, I’ve always looked at the company as an interesting model for success. I mean, you buy SO much product that you get it at a great price, then price it lower than the competitor. Your customers end up getting a good price, and keep coming back, and you make profit like crazy. It’s Business 101. Say what you want about the other things they do… but their company decisions usually make total business sense.

You might remember the recent announcement that Universal would be testing the market with DRM-free music with a handful of online retailers. I personally can’t wait because I really want to buy music online, but I run Linux. I was a massive iTunes advocate until I switched. Then suddenly I couldn’t buy music from them, or play the music I previously bought. Nice.

So that brings me to the current situation. I read about the Wal-Mart music store selling DRM-free music, and so I went to check it out. Eagerly awaiting, hoping some of my favorite bands might be there… and what do I see?

What are the system requirements for using Wal-Mart Music Downloads?

* Windows 2000 or XP (sorry, no Macintosh or Linux)

Are you serious? I mean, honestly… why? I fail to understand ANY reason that their music download service wouldn’t be able to download MP3 files to anything but a Windows machine. I just don’t get it. This isn’t a matter of them not designing their site for anything but IE, this is them actually saying you just can’t use it. “Mac? Nope. Linux? Sorry.”

The entire reason I’m writing this has to do with those aforementioned business decisions. They’ve surprised us in the past, selling various low-end computers that run Linux. I mean, that’s big. There’s a reason it was reported all over the place. One of the largest retailers in the world is selling Linux to the masses. Very cool. (Though, at the time of this writing I’m having a hard time actually finding any Linux products on the website.)

*clears throat

So to put it all together… They sell a Linux computer to a consumer, but refuse to sell them music that will play on that very same computer. And therein lies the conundrum.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 7:42 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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