Walmart Music Downloads: As you know, Wal-Mart is the the world's largest retailer offering just about anything. The "anything" goal was made
just one step closer on its direction to offer digital music downloads on their website.
The general guide to Walmart music downloads is that if you can find the respective CD in its store, then you can download online music of it by way of its site.
Of course, this means that if you can't find in its stores, then you most likely won't find it on their site. The music database is not large - actually one of smallest - at about 400,000 songs.
If you plan to download only commercial songs, and very few of them, you would be nuts to download with the more popular digital music download services. You can get walmart music downloads for a cheap 88 cents per download and several full-length album downloads for just $9.44 each.
There are no other fees, but no premium services exist either. I.e., they don't have an unlimited downloads program, or a portable "To Go" device... at least not yet.
What they do have - and this is pretty neat - is a Custom CD service where you can creat a mix of your favorite songs and they'll send it to you on a CD. Here's how it works:
1. Go to the Music tab from the Wal-Mart.com home page (look for it on the lower right of your screen).
2. Click on the link for "Custom CD"Search or browse to find a song you want to add to your Custom CD and click "Add to CD"Continue adding songs until your playlist is complete or your CD is full. (Please note: limit of 20 songs per CD.)
3. Click "Organize & Buy" and follow the onscreen instructions to complete your purchase.
Wow... 1,2,3. Cannot be any simpler. Or cheaper. The price for this is $4.62 for the first three tracks and $0.88 for each additional track. This is useful if you don't know to burn your own songs.
ATTENTION online music fans - Subscribe To Our New E-Zine!
Let our site come to you! Be on top of what’s hot and what’s not in the world of latest online music. Get the scoop on the hottest downloads each week in around the world. Is your favorite song in? Or out? Only one way to find out… Subscribe to our brand new exclusive e-zine – The Online Music E-zine!
We’ll even give you a $19.95 gift for FREE just for signing up. This will be for a limited time only, so hurry!
Besides the Custom CD service, Wal-Mart digital music download service would be the way to go if you have used up your free trials at other digital music service providers, AND you do not wish to download a whole lot of songs, AND the songs are well-known, commercial songs, AND (finally) you do not want to take advantage from the free Rhapsody 25.
If you plan to download alot of songs per month, the walmart music downloads service would be the one of the worst avenues to take (iTunes would actually be the worst, followed by Yahoo!'s Music Engine). For unlimited downloads, any of Napster, Rhapsody, or Musicnow will do. Use of the former two would be easier, especially with their portable versions: Napster To Go, and Rhapsody To Go.
Even in the case where you plan to do only a few downloads, Rhapsody's relative, the RealPlayer Plus, has some songs that you can buy for 49 cents (but not all). The same song would still be 88 cents for Walmart music downloads and 99 cents at iTunes.