When The Eagles released their CD, Long Road Out of Eden, they did a special deal with Wal-Mart so that only Wal-Mart carried the CD. At first I thought it was clever of Wal-Mart to grab onto something practically guaranteed to be a big hit and use it to drive traffic to their stores. But later on I was reading web articles and realized that The Eagles were the ones who benefited from the exclusive distribution arrangement. What really happened is that the traditional record studios charge a ton of money for publishing, advertising and distributing music. That’s how they make their money and they make a lot. In the end, whatever other people make off your music is money that you, the artist, do not make. So by using Wal-Mart to handle the advertising and distribution, The Eagles could basically self-publish their music and keep a whole lot of the money for themselves. Sounds like a win-win situation for both of them.
You hear stories about how Wal-Mart comes to town and run the little companies out of business. Well, it looks like the mighty Wal-Mart has decided to grab even more of their money away from banks and record companies. Even though the Government told them that they cannot be a bank, they are doing everything a bank does inside of their stores – from cashing checks to credit cards and debit cards, and sending wire transfers of money out of the country and down to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and everywhere else the immigrants came from and want to send money back to their families.