“Yet another major purveyor of copy-protected media has alerted the customers that purchased downloads from it that it’s shutting down its DRM servers, thereby crippling the stuff those customers bought. This time it’s Walmart.com and it joins Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo in what’s becoming a really predictable tradition of handling the situation poorly,” Harry McCracken reports for Technologizer.
“Wal-Mart… sent a e-mail to purchasers of its earlier downloads wrapped in Microsoft DRM advising them that it will shut down the DRM server as of October 9th. Once it’s done that, the tunes can no longer be transferred to new computers or devices; Wal-Mart suggests that customers burn CDs to prevent the music from becoming unusable, long-term,” McCracken reports.
“What it apparently isn’t planning to do is give those “buyers” their money back for the songs they ‘purchased.’ Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all ended up having to do better by their customers than they originally intended; I hope that Wal-Mart, too, will issue refunds or credits,” McCracken reports.
Full article here.
Can we see a problem with DRM?
It’ll do no favors for walmart to give returns, especially after they lost so much…
It’s funny the music companies still don’t realize how screwed they are…
Can we see a problem with Microsoft?
Time to sue the Music biz for selling songs that dont work.
I give the music biz 5 years and they will be gone.
No Pity For the Straggling Idiots
Enjoy your crippled bullshit… you DESERVE IT!
mdn magic word: took; as in you took my fscking music away!
It seems that if you buy music from anyone besides Apple (or maybe Amazon), in the end, you will get stiffed….
@TowerTone
You definitely won’t get stiffed with Amazon, because there is no DRM.
You know, it is a shame I can’t (in good conscience) buy music from amazon. I know that the music cartels are giving music drm free to amazon for half the price they sell to apple for in an attempt to break itunes solidarity on pricing and single song sales.
Amazon may seem like a good deal now, but if they do manage to take a significant share of the distribution they will cut apple off (for specific releases) and we will have $16.95 albums with no single song sales. It is what the cartels desperately want (back) and the itunes store (share of sales) is the only thing that stands between them.
At this point I would rather pay double at the itunes store.
@ MrMcLargeHuge
What you do get with Amazon, however, is music encoded with a 15 year old CODEC.
MP4 (MP3’s successor), used at the iTMS (with millions of DRM free tracks available) is where it’s at today.
Sure we can all see a problem with DRM.
Flipside of the coin, burn the music and you now have portability. Its not the end of the world. If the DRM prevented putting the music on a CD, then it would be a totally different issue.
Is it really necessary to burn songs to CDs? With OS X, it’s a simple matter to use Wiretap, but aren’t there any comparable Windows apps?
If they really had the interest of their customers in mind, they would offer a program to strip the DRM off the music.
They don’t, so the paranoid side of me thinks that this is simply a scam to squeeze more sales, i.e. trick people into buying again.
@Uncle Fester’s cousin:
I agree with you. Music lovers have been paying through the nose for at least the last 50 years. The greedy bastards who profit from this arrangement are hopping mad and would do anything to force consumers to buy their over-priced “albums.”
@ MrMcLargeHuge,
“You definitely won’t get stiffed with Amazon, because there is no DRM”
use tunebite to remove all forms of drm on windows or wiretap on mac. My mdn magic word is trouble.
Proud WalMart
(sung, sorta, to the tune of CCR’s Proud Mary)
I bought some DRM songs at WalMart
Was pretty good deal just the other day
But now they’re going away
My Britney songs won’t play
WTF will I do when I hear them say
Buy More
Buy More
Buy More stuff at WalMart
Each and every day
BC
Let us all pray that our Mr Jobs / Apple is above doing this kind of thing at some point in the future. For the moment, I am undoubtedly with Uncle Fester’s cousin, buying mainly from iTS (trustingly so).
I have tried Amazon’s service, and find it to be very nice, although I still prefer the shopping experience of iTS and will usually pay the extra few cents/dollars for it.
Long Live FairPlay!
@ Uncle Fester’s Cousin, Alansky –
Completely agree with your stance. While I’ve looked at Amazon’s digital music selection, my digital music purchase dollars goes to Apple. Purchasing digital music is great for single songs or for just a few songs from a CD. If I’m interested in more than two or three songs from a CD, I’ll opt for the physical CD and will rip the songs myself at a higher bit-rate. Plus a physical CD is a ready-made backup in case of HD failure. I do opt for used CD’s when possible – usually from Amazon.
Peace.
Idea for new “Get a Mac” Ad.
(PC looks frustrated)
Mac: What’s wrong?
PC: none of my music works anymore?
Mac: What?! Why is that?
PC: Well, I bought hundreds of tracks from a number of different stores, like Wal-Mart, Yahoo, Best Buy. And Now none of them work because of the stupid Windows DRM.
Mac: Wow that’s frustrating. You know iTunes has the largest selection of music and over 500 Billion (sic) songs that are DRM free. That means that Even if Apple shuts down it’s service, the songs will still play. The Zune Marketplace doesn’t offer that.
Wal-Mart makes P.T. Barnum look honest.
This will only help Apple.
Should Apple offer WM’s victims, er “customers”, a way to exchange their crippled music for iTMS credits?
I am kinda surprised to see so far none of the popular web sites/advocate groups to expose more of the music cartels’ evil intention of using Amazon as a tool to have leverage against Apple who is actually their savior, because for those of us who can understand the matter all know that would happen once Amazon sells enough mp3s: the greedy stupid cartels will pull their tunes off of iTunes store and go back to their old gimmick trying to force people to buy albums again, only then people would wish there would be billions of songs available on iTunes still. I personally only get tunes/vids either from iTunes or a visit to any of those bt sites, absolutely no Amazon or any other stores no matter how cheap they are there.
> Should Apple offer WM’s victims, er “customers”, a way to exchange their crippled music for iTMS credits?
That’s a good idea. Better yet, give iTunes for Windows a command to “convert” protected WMA files by offering to download the same iTunes Store songs for 30 cents (or whatever amount).
“iTunes has found the following protected WMA songs that you can upgrade to iTunes Store songs for $0.30 each. Please check the songs you want to upgrade and click the Upgrade button, or click the Cancel button to not accept this offer.”
This would work in a similar way to the current iTunes Plus upgrade for songs you previous purchased.
Replying to myself…
> Better yet, give iTunes for Windows a command to “convert” protected WMA files by offering to download the same iTunes Store songs for 30 cents
Actually, that would not work, unless Apple had a way to verify that the protected WMA files actually belonged to person wanting to convert to iTunes Store songs. So maybe Apple should just offer to “upgrade” at the full price, in which case this new iTunes feature would just be a way to generate more sales and make the transition to iTunes more convenient.
If you took 1 song, how large would the file be on MP3 vs. the MP4 version Apple uses.
Damn wyred guy, that was a long sentence!