corigin.com

A success and failure in legal online downloading to discuss. I’ve done business with both AmazonMP3 and Wal-Mart video, the former being a more satisfying customer experience.

AmazonMP3 grows by adding Warner Music to their library of online songs being sold DRM-free in MP3 format. This adds artists like Van Halen, Green Day and Led Zeppelin and brings their total to nearly three million songs. The iTunes store only sells DRM-free music from EMI while AmazonMP3 now offers EMI, Universal Music Group and Warner. If Sony offers their catalog to AmazonMP3 and that’s a big if, they’ll have four major music outlets licensing digital music for download legally.

This is a positive story for expansion of DRM-free legal digital music delivery. Conversely, Wal-Mart trying to sell digital video with DRM on the same day the DVDs release has failed. Wal-Mart might be good at offering cheap prices in their retail stores, but at least some of their online retail efforts aren’t successful, as shown on December 21 when they killed their online video service launched back in February.

Wal-Mart will continue offering physical DVDs for sale at its stores and online … Wal-Mart’s attempt at downloading came two years after it pulled out of online DVD rental and directed its subscribers to Netflix Inc, and months after it protested Walt Disney Co’s move to sell movies on Apple Inc’s iTunes online music store at below-retail prices.

We bought one movie through Wal-mart Video and had trouble with the video software backed by HP. We were able to watch the movie one time but it remains a stinging $15 memory that might as well have been two tickets to a crowded theater because it was a one watch only experience. This remains the major danger with buying any DRM-infected file and the reason we buy very little music and video this way.

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