October 10th, 2008
Consumers score a partial win against Walmart
Walmart has done a 180 on its earlier decision to pull the plug on its DRM servers (thereby locking customers’ music collection to whatever PC it happened to be on at the time) and decided to keep the DRM servers running - for now.
Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases
Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time. What this means to you is that our existing service continues and there is no action required on your part. Our customer service team will continue to assist with DRM issues for protected windows media audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com.
While our customer support team is available to assist you with any issues, we continue to recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you insure access to them from any personal computer at any time in the future.
We appreciate your support and patience as we work to provide the best service possible to you. As we move forward with our 100% MP3 store, we’ll continue to update you with key decisions regarding our service and your account via email.
Thank you for using Walmart MP3 Music Downloads.
The Walmart Digital Music Team
Personally, if I had any Walmart music wrapped in DRM, I’d be backing these onto CD and slowly converting them to a format such as MP3. Why? Because Walmart is making no long-term guarantees here:
… we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time. [emphasis added]
If the fuss blows over, I get the feeling that Walmart will try to retire the DRM servers again.
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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