Musical tastes aside the fact remains that walmart only sells edited albums with little or no indication to the consumer. I've never seen a "warning all music edited" sign at walmart, and if they do have some kind of indication on the shelf sticker, i've never seen it.
(Also how often does product at walmart actually match up with the shelf sticker? not very. I used to work for an outside company that did inventories for walmart, and even though they cleaned and straightened their product before we got there, the shelves were more often than not chaos.)
Walmart is in possession of more than 10% of the cd sales market in the us, and any pubisher that doesn't make cd sales through them shoots themself in the foot because their competition will. This forces the editing of an artist's original intent, and the sale of this distortion to an unaware consumer. While technically i'm sure they're covered (they can most likely afford more lawyers than i can imagine) the end result of this situation is basically an act of FRAUD.
Some people have said here that they don't think it's a big deal because walmarts "moral guidelines" match their own, and so they feel they are not affected by this. They feel comfortable letting the walmart corporation make their decisions for them, which is a scary thing. What about the day that their views aren't congruant to that of management? I think that it's a legitimate concern when somebody is telling me what i should and shouldn't listen to, and that people should eye warily anybody who's telling them "don't worry you don't need to know, we know what's best for you"
The other argument i've heard is the "for the children" argument which is basically that parents want to make sure their children listen to music that is congruant to their moral/political/religious views. They say that by only letting their kids listen to cds from walmart, they are being responsible and protecting them. This argument is lazy and a great example of the poor parenting that causes so many problems today, even with editing forms and ideas still come through that you may not agree with. If you're that concerned, check the cd before they listen to it. Even if the lyics aren't printed on the insert they can easily be found on the internet
http://www.lyrics.com/
http://www.azlyrics.com/
^these two I just pulled off a quick google search for the string "lyrics" and there were dozens more. Artists often have web pages with lyrics as well as the numerous fan pages out there. To put your job off onto the hands of walmart is lazy and irrisponsible. Also censorship standards are not always even successful in stopping ideas. Language evolves around censored "bad words" and while a song may not say "**** that ****" there will be less direct things that you still may not approve of. (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds anyone?)
As for the rest of Walmarts product somebody before summed it up, the quality stuff costs as much as anywhere else and the rest is crap. Sure it's cheaper today, but if its broken in a year & you've got to buy another one did you really save any money?
Back to music though, I think they should come up with a censored label similar to that parental advisory label, that should be a two way street. Also any label should be OUTSIDE the cd wrapper, not stuck on or printed over the cover art.
I was in great dismay when i learned that some of my cd collection was edited and I'm still searching for some way to tell and identify which ones are false. That's how i stumbled across this forum/thread and how i will leave carrying on my search. Remember though, think for yourself or else someone else will be glad to do it for you.
Peace
p.s.
keep tabs on censorship:
http://massmic.com/