Walmart closing online music store

WASHINGTON – American retail giant Walmart will close its online digital music store, Walmart MP3 Downloads, at the end of the month, a spokesman for the company said.

“We recently notified our music partners that we’ve made a business decision to no longer offer MP3 digital tracks as of August 29, 2011,” said Ravi Jariwala.

“We’ll continue to provide support to our customers who previously purchased digital music through Walmart Music Downloads so they may continue to enjoy and manage their existing WMA files,” Jariwala said.

The action does not affect Walmart sales of discs online, or its online music promotion site, Walmart Soundcheck.

The company opened Walmart MP3 Downloads in 2003 with the goal of dominating the market with lower prices than the competition. But in the end it never posed a challenge to Apple’s iTunes, still the dominant player.