Blue Light Special: Walmart Ends WMA Support 10/9

Walmart.com has given just two weeks notice to customers that it will end support of WMA downloads purchased there by shutting down server access on October 9th.  Microsoft and Yahoo are making similar moves, but are offering much longer notices.  The WalMart email read:

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