Digital Music and AntiVirus problems

My 2nd post - Face it I am not to good at this blogging bit.  Hopefully this one helps somebody out so here goes.

So I am slowly becoming a fan of (legal) music downloading via online music stores like buy.com and walmart.com (now I am experimenting with Microsoft's music store beta.music.msn.com).  I have tried iTunes and Napster and neither really did anything for me.  Never the less that is not the reason for my post.

I ran into an issue with walmart however when attempting to acquire my music license while running Mcafee antivirus 8.x.  It turns out DRM behaves a lot like a virus.  A file requesting information from another file over your internet connection.  Essentially the .wma or .mp3 file request a license from the license server where the file was purchased (a lot like a virus attempting to download more malicious code to your machine).  Since you get no warning by default from Mcafee or Symantec it just seems like the things are broken with Media Player or with your online music store.

OK, enough of my ramble (simply disable your anti-virus scanner for the 1st few seconds of the song (long enough for your computer to acquire the license).  Then re-enable your AV.  I am not thrilled with this solution but I have not figured out how to configure Mcafee 8 to allow my music downloads acquire a license.  I can live with it for now since it is once per song ever, but you have to admit a little annoying.

I must admit I was very impressed that WalMart has 24 hour support as well.  I have not looked at the other players support including ours at Microsoft.  Never the less I dialed the 800 number and was on hold for all of 3 minutes before someone helped solved my issue.  https://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/servlet/HelpTopicServlet?topicIndex=9.  Nice touch WalMart.

I would love to hear of what you think of Windows Media Player 10 and Microsoft's music store as well.  Fell free to post comments.

Hope this helps someone else playing with digital music :-)