Walmart.com is Anti-Mac
This afternoon I happened to try going to the “Music Download” section at Walmart.com. I was on my PC using Firefox and when I clicked the Music Downloads link I was presented with a page telling me I had an “Invalid Browser”. It seems they want me to use Internet Explorer 5.5 or newer.
So, being curious, I wondered how they handled things for Apple/OS X users. So, I fired up Firefox on the old Powerbook and tried to get to the Music Downloads. Nope, invalid browser. Apparently, even on OS X I need “Internet Explorer 5.5 or later”, which is interesting since that browser simply doesn’t exist for OS X (or anything non-windows, for that matter). So, I tried Safari and got exactly the same thing.
It looks like Walmart simply doesn’t want anyone except Windows users—and only those who don’t value their computer security at that!—to buy music from them. Oh well, at least I wasn’t actually planning to buy anything anyway; I just wanted to grab some of their 30-second sample :MP3:s for a cellphone ringer.
Posted Saturday April 9, 2005 in Rants by Chris Curtis
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Yeah, it’s incredibly crappy, even for Walmart. Bill Palmer did a comparison back in 12/03 that goes feature by feature. It’s a good read.
Also, according to NPD, the organization that collects and publishes all known retail sales statistics, iTMS has a 70% market share, and Wal-Mart has just in the past few months reached 6%, or roughly equal to the number of people that purchase music from RealNetworks.
Going to $x.88 from the $x.99 legacy left us from the 1880’s doesn’t make your price different enough to matter, and it certainly doesn’t make you better or more accessible.
By Derek Jones on April 10, 2005 at 12:18pm link