Class Action

Walmart DRM Music: Save it or Lose it

By classlawblog

Purchasers of music from Walmart prior to February 2008 have been instructed by Walmart to back up their music or risk losing their music altogether.   Before February 2008, Walmart music purchasers bought music containing DRM (digital rights management) technology.  DRM is a control technology that limits the usage of digital media.  Walmart will no longer support DRM music after October 9, 2008.  At which point, music purchasers will be unable to transfer their music to other computers or restore their music.

Affected Walmart music purchasers have received the email reproduced below:

From: Walmart Music Team
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com
Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases

We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart’s MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have offered only DRM (digital rights management) -free MP3s since February 2008. As the final stage of our transition to a full DRM-free MP3 download store, Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site.

If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.

Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.

Thank you for using Walmart.com for music downloads. We are working hard to make our store better than ever and easier to use.

Walmart Music Team

Full post as published by ClassLawBlog.com on October 15, 2008 (boomark / email).