Wal-Mart DRM-free? Not for the rest of us...
April 7th 2008
Wired reports that Wal-Mart's mp3 store is selling DRM-free music, which might be considered a good thing™ were it not for a number of egregious problems with the store itself, including its limited content.
On the latter point, Wal-Mart isn't offering music, at least temporarily, from Sony/BMG and Warner. Whereas Wired believes said content isn't available because of "licensing squabbles," I'm more inclined to believe always parsimonious Wal-Mart won't pay them off and is holding out for better terms.
And, as mentioned, issues with the store itself cancel out any good gained by the switch to DRM-free--many of the retail giant's mp3 store's features require Internet Explorer.
Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard now only $109.98! Order NOW!
Further, attempting to load Wal-Mart's mp3 store in Safari or Firefox on a Mac generates the following message:
We're sorry, your operating system is incompatible. To provide the best download experience, we can no longer support Windows 98, ME or NT. Please visit again after you upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP.
Upgrade to XP? Um, maybe not...
What's your take?
Exclusive offer. Limited time only.
