After eight years of quietly selling music downloads, Wal-Mart
This is a surprising move on many different levels.
- Wal-Mart recently integrated its Vudu video-streaming service with walmart.com, so it would seem odd that it's throwing more promotional muscle behind one form of a la carte streaming while nixing another.
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Amazon.com
(Nasdaq: AMZN) (Nasdaq: AAPL) -
Best Buy
(NYSE: BBY) - Amazon is now selling movies, music, books, and software online. If Wal-Mart truly wants to compete with Amazon, it can't afford to fall behind.
- Digital music is apparently popular, judging by the initial excitement over Pandora Media's
(NYSE: P)
Wal-Mart's MP3 page is still not advising shoppers of its pending closure, so there may be time for the discounter to change its mind.
Wal-Mart tried to set itself apart from Apple and Amazon by selling music at a slight discount to the larger e-tailers. Offering songs at $0.64, $0.94, and $1.24 price points should have been a draw to young penny-pinching listeners. However, whether it's that the Wal-Mart brand just wasn't cool enough for music tracks or that folks are just more glued to the iTunes interface than they would care to admit, the department-store chain just wasn't able to compete on price alone.
Music fans are finicky. No surprise there. Wal-Mart hangs it up just as the digital-music scene is getting good? Now that is a big surprise.
Where do you buy your digital music -- if you even buy digital music? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.
