Wal-Mart to Sell DRM free Digital Music. Can Digital Books Be Far Behind?
Publishing Newsebookstore / music / Wal-mart3 Comments
Wal-Mart positions itselfto be a force in the digital music business in which Apple ITunes holds a more than 70% market share. To challenge the big gun who is now third in the overall music sales, Wal-Mart has begun to sell high quality (256 ) songs from EMI at a lower price point. While Apple is selling DRM free EMI songs at iTunes for $1.29, these same songs at Wal-Mart sell for $.99 and are also DRM free.
With Wal-mart offering DRM free music clearly in an attempt to lure customers away from Apple, it seems to make sense that it would offer lower priced ebooks in the future to complement its print based book business. I can hope that the future also holds DRM free ebooks.
What is DRM?
I’m actually curious if Walmart is selling the censored versions of music like they normally do. I also wonder if that will prevent them from taking on and beating Apple in the marketplace.
DRM stands for digital rights management. DRM is the special software that limits where you can play the downloaded song or book. For example the music that you buy on Itunes can only be played on 6 computers and only authorized Ipods.