After 8 years and thousands and thousands of songs sold, Walmart has succumbed to the power of the number 1 and 2 online music retailers in the world. They announced that on August 28th, 2011, they will start the process of closing down the online store. But if you bought music from Walmart's online store, there you're not 100% out in the cold.

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Walmart has said it will leave the servers online for existing customers, but will not accept new ones and will shutter the online sale of music at the end of the day on August 29th. So no new music will be sold after that date.

Walmart started it's online music store back in December 2003 and quickly became the number 2 online music retailer, behind iTunes, but sold Windows versions only of their music, using the Windows Media Formats like "WMA". These were not very well supported by most of the music players.  Apple and iTunes had already cemented it's place with the iPod. But in 2007, Amazon broke into the business, and it took them only a year to surpass Walmart. While both Amazon and Walmart offered lower prices for individual tracks, iTunes' dominance has yet to be shaken.

If Walmart has another idea in mind for online music, it hasn't leaked any info, so we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

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