Walmart Expands Online Movies But Eliminates Music

Walmart has made a decision to drop their music download service. According to a recent statement, Walmart, said this is a business decision and gave no further reason for ending their service. Walmart began their music download service in 2003 to compete with Apple's iTunes. Their music downloads sold for $.88 while Apple was selling them for $.99. When Apple increased their prices to $1.29, Walmart, in their “roll back” fashion, sold downloads for $1.24. Recently, Walmart upped the ante with movie streaming. Earlier this year, they purchased Vudu, an online video streaming service. Just this week, Walmart launched Vudu on the iPad. The Vudu online service claims to provide movie downloads the day they are released on DVD or Blu-ray. Whether or not this has anything do with Walmart’s decision to drop their music is unclear. The music download service will end on August 29, 2011. Anyone who has purchased music from Walmart’s download service, will still be able to manage their music.