Walmart's answer to iTunes

Actually, yes. This is a really old link, but I am sure there is more out there now.

http://www.macslash.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/24/198248

As far as I know, Apple still has the best deal in terms of what you can actually do with the music you buy. At least one of those companies is still a subscription service, so if you quit paying a monthly fee, you lose the songs that you bought...
Walmart may have the power to do it similarly to or better than Apple. They have mucho dinero and where there's a will, there's wal-mart. (HAAH I just made that up....plfffffff).
 
Hello....is there anybody in there? Just knock if you can hear me..... ;) Walmart service will probably be pretty good, but soon everyone will be doing it..it'll be the new wave of hippie crack...Whippits for everyone and online music services too!
 

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I like my McNasty with a side of Sassy.

Oh, and since the download business is proposed to be worth several billion dollars annually within a handful of years, everyone is gambling that they can get people onto their system and keep them. It's all sorts of expensive to do well, and Apple is the leader in volume and execution and they are at zero profit. But that's what everyone is going for, it's a land grab right now and someone big like Wal-Mart or Dell marketing to their built in userbase for a product that they're taking a loss on for the next two years is still financially reasonable depending on how you stack the odds for this huge cashout in a few years.

There will be many more before it's over. Apple has its work cut out for it. I have little doubt that iTunes will remain the best implementation out there, but I'm preaching to the choir on quality products based on reliability and usability. many people buy the best promise at the lowest price, and those are the people that buy computers at Wal-Mart or from Dell, and the product doesn't have to do much more than convince the customer that they have something of value, and keep them from downloading any competing product.

It's not quite Sherman anti-trust, but it gets close. The whole default desktop, user takes what you give them type argument holding the merit that it does.
 
I think a recent post discussed it. Steve Jobs was quoted (basically) as saying that Wal-Mart hasn't been much of an online presence, so there's no sense expecting anything revolutionary from them that might threaten the iTMS.
 
I installed Windows Media Player 9, then downloaded the sample song. It played well. The problem seems to be is that this is oriented towards windows users. In fact, the site implies it won't work with anything else.
But a least as far as playing the songs, apparently not.

However, there doesn't appear to be a way to burn the songs to a CD on a Mac.

Also you should read their statements about DRM. Very interesting. The first time a download is played, you have to be connected to the internet to verify the DRM.

I wonder how long it will be before that is cracked?

Anyway to convert WMF files so they can be played in iTunes? The only way I see is to download to a PC, and then burn to a CD, then rip using iTunes on a mac.
 
What is the difference (if any) between a WMF and a WMA file? I, unfortunately, have to deal with professionally encoded WMAs frequently and they sound fantastic. I don't know what Walmart is providing exactly, what bit rates, etc/, but WMAs can absolutely sound great.

I listen to AACs more as a Mac user, so I'm used to the subtle anomalies and can pick them out easily in 128kbit files. The WMAs I receive (from a pro audio guy) are pristine. I haven't done any A/B comparisons with AAC, but in general I would say they are quite similar in quality, at least when done properly.
 
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