It must be that Steve Jobs got the top job at Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). He has been crying for the music industry to offer music without copyright protection, and the world's largest retailer has just become his best friend.
Wall-Mart's large online music store will begin to offer songs that can be played anywhere - transferred from device to device. The songs will be sold for 94 cents per track and, according to Reuters, "the new format let customers play music on almost any device, including iPod, phones and Microsoft Corps's Zune portable media player."
The announcement may be bad news for two large music companies that have not already decided to move full-speed into DRM-free downloads, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG). They fear that if music can be moved anywhere and shared, that it will cut into units sales from customers who cannot now get songs from friends and neighbors. Champions of open downloads like Mr. Jobs say that CDs are already routinely ripped so that most digital music is not protected anyway.
Music publishers continue to be pounded by the industry's new model. They earn less on downloads from services like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes than they do from CDs, but sales of the physical discs are falling fast as consumers move away from the format.
Good for Apple and bad from companies like Warner.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-21-2007 @ 10:02AM
C Walton said...
Greed will kill the traditional music companies.
8-21-2007 @ 10:28PM
starwxrwx said...
I wasn't under the impression that less profit was made per song on the internet - in fact I thought it was MORE than on a CD.
Either way, surely greater volumes (with NO increased cost of production) will outweigh any loss.
8-24-2007 @ 7:14AM
roudy11z said...
I don't have any pitty for the record companies,writers, or whoever. They have been ripping the public off for years. They have flaunted their success by showing us how rich they have become. Some of the song writers can't write any better than my children and try to push crap in front of us on TV. Well the old saying of "what goes around comes around" is true in this case. Go WalMart!!