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It is this week’s news that WAL Mart, the American public corporation, decided to make available part of their music catalogue in MP3 / WMA formats.

walmartmp3

This means the chance to buy music at the prices iTunes got us use to but with the advantage of having tracks freely portable from MP3 reader, to PC to anything through which it is possible to enjoy music in digital format; this simply means the adoption of formats whose interoperability is guaranteed by the absence of usage restrictions: or in other words no DRM.


I quickly read the user’s license agreement for the WMA format and it seems similar to iTunes but it doesn’t matter so much for this article’s purpose.

wmalicense

Nothing new can be said, Jobs had already announced a similar move for their lucky on-line music portal… but it is obvious that this choice of Walmart’s (obviously connected to those record companies that support the “no DRM” project), even if restricted up to now only for the US market (!) is anyhow important and sanctions a specific momentum of the market.

As far as competition, I have already been impressed enough about finding certain songs in MP3 format since this isn’t possible with iTunes and in any case at a price which seems to me a bit lower.

musiclist

I wouldn’t like to face the matter about if a similar “undertaking” could impact negatively on the sale of tracks in digital and traditional format increasing the possibility of “giving away“ easily one’s own music to friends and others… I want to take for granted that the multinationals involved have done their sums right.

But it is “nice” to discuss about how a similar decision could raise the sales of “traditional” MP3 readers; and when I say “traditional” I mean whatever isn’t an iPod.

So far, one of the mainsprings for buying an iPod, besides the purely emotional fact of the “status symbol”, was the chance to buy music legally and as I’d say at more than acceptable prices: to sum up, I don’t understand why music should be burned for less than € 1 per song.

When the purchase of a nearly € 30 CD was simply due to the desire for listening to a few songs of a certain group and nothing else, let’s say burning could have been accepted (even if inexcusable), but at the price of a coffee and with the possibility of buying just the song you are interested in…

If today most of the catalogue could be enjoyed through formats which are not protected by DRM (missing an open DRM standard commonly accepted and shared by rational users), there would be more perspectives for the builders of less renowned MP3 readers.

Recently I bought an unbranded reader for about € 50 , if I remember right (and it wasn’t even the most cheapest). What to say… for a slightly smaller format than the iPod nano (which I already have along with an iPod Video), I was given these following features for free:

  • MP3, WMA and OGG music file reading
  • Text file(.txt) reading
  • Radio
  • Vocal recording and radio stations
  • A/V clip display in MP4 format

Well… a bunch of features that not even the most expensive iPod offers today. Of course, video resolution was not as “crisp’n clean” as Apples’s (I imagine), Creative’s or Archos’ etc… Obviously, the user interface was a bit too much, as to say, nerd(!) and a synchronization programme with the PC desktop was missing.

But…in a object just a bit bigger than a key-ring and which costs less than € 50, I found a lot of features that neither two of the most expensive iPods of mine offer (oh, according to the news, the unbranded reader is equipped with a 2Gb memory). I wonder if a more usable interface is worth an economical difference of more than € 100… especially considering the fact that firmwares can be updated for almost all the readers on the market.

Is this the dawn of a renewed market of MP3 readers? I’m not totally convinced even because we all know how “amazing” marketing and branding policies are when addressing customers: after all, lots of people not only buy an “object, but they adopt a new life-style.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to keep my iPod (not only that… I’m going to wait till it breaks!), and I will continue using the iTunes portal and complete kit; but it is obvious that these are instruments too… business will be based on the sales of tracks and as soon as there will be competitive services for the purchase of non DRM formats, then…the iPod will even read traditional MP3s, right?