Riding the growing wave of DRM free licensing, Wal-Mart is starting to offer DRM-free MP3s for a la carte download. I love it and think it’s great. $.93 per download with 30 second auditions. Fairly straight forward, normal store front model - just like Wal-Mart. I think this is another sign of things to come for DRM - love it. Rhapsody and MTVI don’t think have a strategic sense of what this means. Companies like Real/Rhapsody or MTV’s Urge or Napster that all built business models based on required DRM have a major problem on their hands, and in my view, forming a new distribution arm is not going to help. I am just glad we’re moving toward a more open format for distribution. Now it lets the businesses play on more equal footing and allows for greater business model diversity in the market - which in this case is a good thing.

Originally published on WordPress on August 22, 2007. Migrated to this blog on May 29, 2025.