Nate Anderson at Ars reports that Wal-Mart is jumping on the no-DRM bandwagon:
DRM isn’t yet dead in the music business, but it has a nasty, hacking cough. Wal-Mart is the latest company to ditch the DRM in an attempt to crack the coveted iPod market, which for years has been out of reach. The company announced this morning that it has embraced high-bitrate MP3s from Universal and EMI (iTunes only has DRM-free files from EMI, not from Universal), and it promises to continually expand its offerings.
Wal-Mart has actually run a download store for years, selling DRM-encumbered WMA files at $0.88 a pop. They couldn’t play on either the iPod or the Zune, but at least they were cheap!
Now that the DRM shackles are loosening, Wal-Mart can offer a store with at least a chance of attracting customers. As a sign of how badly Wal-Mart want to attract iPod users, the music store doesn’t list tracks as being DRM-free, but as being ready to “play on the iPod.”
Because neither Warner nor Sony BMG are yet licensing their catalogs without DRM, many of the tracks at the store are still DRM-encumbered WMA files—it’s a confusing situation and a huge drawback if the company wants iPod users to shop there. Most users don’t think in terms of what record label their favorite artists appear on, so finding music for download can be a hit-and-miss affair. Still, there’s not much that Wal-Mart can do except try to compete on price with its current selection of tracks and stress the fact that it has MP3s from Universal as well.
At this point, it’s only a matter of time before Warner and Sony BMG follow suit. Wal-Mart customers are not going to be happy about a situation in which half the music on offer plays on an iPod and the other half doesn’t. And when customers complain, Wal-Mart is likely to point the finger straight at the labels and say “we’d love to sell you unencumbered songs, but they won’t let us.” Warner and Sony will be leaving money on the table if they continue to sell their songs in crippled formats.
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