Australian rock band AC/DC released “Black Ice” in the U.S. today, its 15th studio album. I find that the band’s choice of Wal-Mart (and Sam’s Club) as exclusive retail store outlet for the album sends a subtle yet interesting corporate message. Mainly that – like it or not – Wal-Mart has the influence and buying power to provide just about anything its customers may ever want. Never mind automotive, optical, and grocer service extensions. How about exclusively delivering some of the music industry’s most successful acts?

This isn’t the first time Wal-Mart has been an exclusive distribution channel for music. Garth Brooks kicked off the whole concept, offering “The Limited Series” boxed set of his recent albums and outtakes during the 2005 holiday season. Earlier this summer, Journey released its “Revelation” album through Wal-Mart, moving a steady 100,000 units its first week. Last November, the Eagles issued “Long Road Out Of Eden,” its first studio album in more than 25 years – “Eden” is the most popular of any Wal-Mart exclusive to date with over 5.5 million copies sold.

Numbers like these are earning Wal-Mart recognition within the battered major-label music industry. With iTunes and digital music broadly taking their toll on the CD format, musicians shouldn’t need more than one look at Wal-Mart’s geographic and demographic coverage to recognize it as the holy grail of physical distribution channels. Approximately a third of Americans shop at Wal-Mart, according to Wikipedia.

By representing only well established acts with proven multi-platinum album sales, Wal-Mart better controls and aligns itself for success in music distribution while creating new offers to attract customers.

“Black Ice,” as an $11.88 door buster stands to bring a lot of existing and perhaps a few new Wal-Mart customers into stores for some extra shopping while reasonably reaching a majority of U.S. AC/DC fans.

For Wal-Mart then, it’s a matter of good corporate behavior, message delivery, and of course the public’s perception. Are these music deals reinforcing monolithic market domination or are they simply a nice extention of the company’s price and quality value balance?

The former concerns me.  I don’t necessarily want one retailer fulfilling all my goods and services needs. Feels limiting and big brother-ish. Although, for its part, Wal-Mart does consistently leverage its power to offer a broad array of affordable options to its customers. Hard to argue with that, and compelling in these current economic times. If the company genuinely desires to aid customers in this fashion and take an appropriate level of credit for it, I’m good. The music deals just intrigue me. I don’t think Sam Walton envisioned this in 1962 while running his little five-and-dime. He’d probably be impressed with his company’s diversification these days though.

By the way, it’s nice to have a new AC/DC album after an eight year absence. Fun-loving, three-chord rock with lots of innuendo always seems to find a place, even at Wal-Mart.

Here’s the first video for “Rock ‘N Roll Train.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX2xbqWtyJU]