When the article mentioned Walmart's 2008 "MP3 Store" shutdown I thought the author was about to relate it to the eBook store closure via the fact that they were both Microsoft DRM systems under the hood, but the author was only comparing them ideologically. I wonder if he knew that the Walmart "MP3 store" was actually a "PlaysForSure WMA store" originally and that the Microsoft PlaysForSure shutdown is the reason for the cited 2008 shut down.

From https://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63/~/music-... : "If you downloaded music from Walmart before February 2008, some of your music files may be in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format."

Walmart shifted to selling 256k non-DRM MP3s after that, and then that store was also killed in 2011: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/08/walma...

I also can't think of the Walmart music store without thinking of this dramatic reading of a timeless 2004 (!) rant about the usability of the Walmart store in non-Microsoft browsers/players. The SWF probably won't play for most of you, but the original post is screenshotted below it: https://www.somethingawful.com/flash-tub/letter-from-interne...