Amazon and Pepsi plan to give away 1 billion DRM-free songs
Amazon and Pepsi are planning to launch a yearlong promotion to give away 1 billion MP3s from Amazon's recently launched MP3 download store. The promotion will launch during the Super Bowl on Feb 3rd.Here's how it works. Pepsi will print a code on 5 billion bottle caps. You can use the codes from 5 bottle caps to buy one song at Amazon Mp3.
Right now, that means you can buy DRM-free tracks from artists signed to EMI, Universal Music Group, Hollywood Records, and a number of smaller labels. Warner and Sony have not yet signed up with Amazon. But Billboard reports that the promotion could be incentive for the holdouts to sign up. That plus Wal-Mart is urging the music labels to participate in its DRM-free MP3 store.
This isn't the first time Pepsi's gotten involved in a major music promotion. Pepsi and Apple partnered in 2004 for a Super Bowl campaign to promote the iTunes music store. Of course, the goal at the time was to give away 25 million tracks, while customers only redeemed about 5 million. So just because Amazon and Pepsi say they've got 1 billion songs to give away doesn't mean they'll actually be delivering anywhere near that number.
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Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsNickNov 30th 2007 8:42PM
Well, that would be about 1 song every two years for me worth of bottle caps, so I guess I'm not exactly the demographic for this contest. Though part of me thinks it will work as well for Amazon as it has for Apple, the other part thinks they are just getting greedy with 5 bottle caps. That's over $5 worth of pepsi for one song.
RDDec 2nd 2007 7:44AM
Interesting giveaway, posting it for others to see on http://www.socialbuys.com
Timmay!Dec 3rd 2007 9:51AM
I stopped following most promos like this a while ago. If you do the math not only on this, but most other soft-drink promos, you're usually spending more money on the drinks than you would normally on whatever you're saving the cap/labels for.
The only way to make something like this worthwhile would be to
A) Drink Pepsi (or Coke, or whoever's running the promo) on a regular basis in the first place, then the promo would be an added bonus.
or
B) Know a few people who drink the stuff on a regular basis, but don't want to cash in the caps.