Walmart closing down its digital music store
Walmart is shuttering its digital music store on August 29, the company announced this week. The store was introduced to the public on March 23, 2004, and made a valiant effort at competing with iTunes, often offering up songs for even cheaper than Jobs and Apple were able to make them on iTunes. Unfortunately, Walmart stubbornly clung to the Windows market, offering songs as WMA files laden with Microsoft's DRM, unplayable on the iPod even as that music player saw astronomic growth.
Walmart's always been a huge player in terms of music sales, but with digital music growth higher than ever and physical media at an all-time low, the company's influence has waned quite a bit. And closing down the digital store means they're more or less surrendering to iTunes' superiority. Not that Walmart itself is in trouble at all -- we hear they still sell a lot more than music.
