Walmart yesterday announced that it will close its MP3 store (yes, it had one!) on August 29th. “We recently notified our music partners that we’ve made a business decision to no longer offer MP3 digital tracks as of Aug. 29, 2011,” the company said in a statement.
Walmart launched its MP3 store seven years ago but it was not able to compete against Apple and Amazon despite undercutting their pricing. Part of Walmart’s failure can be traced back to its choice of offering songs in the WMA format when it first launched. It eventually found itself competing against Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace as well as its other competitors.
Walmart confirmed it will continue to sell physical record music products. It also confirmed that it would continue to operate its DRM servers to support customers who have older, protected files.
Walmart shuttered its movie download service in 2007.