Walmart is becoming the latest music vendor to shut down its legacy digital rights management (DRM) system, prompting warnings of potential for lost purchases. The company is advising users to back up any songs which are currently running with the company"s DRM software. When the company shuts down in licensing servers on October 9th, users will be unable to verify new machines or transfer songs to other systems.
Walmart has been selling DRM-free files for more than a year through its online service. The new files are being distributed as clean MP3 files, whereas the DRM-equipped songs and videos were encoded in the WMA format. "DRM-protected music has been a sensitive issue and we recognize how confusing it can be to customers," lead music buyer Tom Welch said in a blog posting.