In an 11th hour announcement, Walmart has reversed their decesion to shut down their DRM (Digital Rights Management) servers.

As we reported last month, Walmart was going to shut down their DRM servers on October 9th, meaning that anyone who had purchased a song during the time the company put DRM on files would no longer be able to play them.  Due to consumer demand, Walmart is now opting to keep the servers running indefinitely. Those who would have been effected by this have received a second email explaining the situation.

NOTE: This is a follow-up to our email titled “Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases” from 9/26/08.

Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time. What this means to you is that our existing service continues and there is no action required on your part. Our customer service team will continue to assist with DRM issues for protected windows media audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com.

While our customer support team is available to assist you with any issues, we continue to recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you insure access to them from any personal computer at any time in the future.

We appreciate your support and patience as we work to provide the best service possible to you. As we move forward with our 100% MP3 store, we’ll continue to update you with key decisions regarding our service and your account via email.

Thank you for using Walmart MP3 Music Downloads.

The Walmart Digital Music Team

I would suggest you look at this as a reprieve only, because who knows when they may reverse their decision again.  Back up to CD any way, and make sure to not even concern yourself with any future decisons about DRM.