Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Pepsi to Team Up with Amazon for Superbowl MP3 Giveaway?

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,272
39,085


Pepsi and Amazon are negotiating a deal to give away up to 1 billion songs during a music-giveaway promotion that will launch during the 2008 Superbowl on February 3rd, according to Billboard Magazine. The deal is reminiscent of the early iTunes-Pepsi promotional giveaways that were launched at the 2004 and 2005 Superbowls.

In the upcoming promotion, however, Amazon will replace Apple as the music distributor, providing MP3s from their DRM-free Music Store which launched as an early Beta in September. Amazon's DRM-free store works on Macs and integrates remarkably well with iTunes.

The negotiations also serve as a push for several labels to join the DRM-free movement, since the promotion is sure to attract a large number of customers. Wal-Mart is also forcing the issue by alerting Warner Music Group and Sony BMG that they will pull all Windows Media Audio (DRM) format music from their site by January if the labels have not yet provided their music in MP3 format.

At present, the labels offering DRM-free music are fragmented across stores. EMI was first to announce the launch of DRM-free music in iTunes, while Universal is offering DRM free music to everyone but iTunes.

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2007/11/30/pepsi-to-team-up-with-amazon-for-superbowl-mp3-giveaway/
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
1 billion DRM-free songs, iPod-ready and integrated nicely with iTunes (which Amazon's downloader is)? Sounds good to me!
 
Just Say No - to drm

The record Cos. wouldn't listen to their customers. Now they whine about how bad the CD business is. Give customers quality, convenience, ease of use and they will spend money.

Their business is changing and they have missed the bus. Now The market will dictate how they will have to do business. Tough crap. That is business. It is never static.
Good luck Execs. ;) :p
 
I think it's getting voted down because everyone is getting tired of the music industry's crap. I for one am. I love iTunes. It made me go from downloading music illegally to downloading songs for 99 cents a pop. The music industry hates the fact that now CDs are not being sold as well because people only want the songs that are good, not the other filler crap often included on compact disks. Before iTunes, I looked into other digital download services, such as music match, and never found the same quality. If the record companies want to abandon iTunes, fine, I'll go back to the old way of doing things.. It's a hell of a lot cheaper for me, considering I have legally purchased 1,064 songs since iTunes 4 debuted with the store.

As far as Amazon teaming up with Pepsi, I think it is good and bad at the same time. I honestly wish that Apple would bring back the Pepsi + iTunes deal that they had in 04 and 05. I drink pepsi, and I use iTunes, so it worked out well when I was on the road to pretty much get a 2 for 1. DRM free doesn't make much of a difference to me. If I want to make iTunes music DRM free, I'll just burn and reimport.. tada DRM free. I'm also not a fan of the MP3 format. MP4 (P or A), to me at least, sounds better. It's good that free songs are being given away and DRM free, for those that it matters to. But it stinks that iTunes isn't participating in it anymore...

And that's my rant :)
 
So you get to choose from a bunch of EMI songs? Sounds lame. I wonder if more record labels plan on going DRM-free before the Superbowl?
 
Snooze

AAPL's been there, done that. You can't just do the same promo over and over again. Get's lame real quick.

Wonder what the CEO of Universal thinks about giving away 1B songs without ever seeing a penny for them??? Makes his belly aching about iTunes revenue sharing seem a little pointless.
 
slffl said:
So you get to choose from a bunch of EMI songs? Sounds lame. I wonder if more record labels plan on going DRM-free before the Superbowl?
Click to expand...

Universal has been signed with Amazon MP3 from the start, as well as tons of indies. Amazon MP3 has much better coverage than iTunes Plus.
 
Howmanoid said:
AAPL's been there, done that. You can't just do the same promo over and over again. Get's lame real quick.

Wonder what the CEO of Universal thinks about giving away 1B songs without ever seeing a penny for them??? Makes his belly aching about iTunes revenue sharing seem a little pointless.
Click to expand...

I assure you he's getting more than a penny for them. And yes, you can do the same promo over and over again if it successfully promotes your products — why on earth wouldn't you be able to?
 
I think this is bad news for apple (the pepsi amazon deal), but good news for consumers as a whole. This is great. I want to buy music anywhere and play it on anything (I am an ipod user). I might even buy more music.
 
timothyjay2004 said:
I think it's getting voted down because everyone is getting tired of the music industry's crap. I for one am. I love iTunes. It made me go from downloading music illegally to downloading songs for 99 cents a pop.
Click to expand...

I agree.. The music labels are pissed off that they lost control to Apple, but the reason it happened is that they were too dumb to create this kind of system themselves (and even if they did it would probably be overpriced and crappy anyway). Now we have Universal trying to artificially create their own system that users won't want to use (mac rumors post). They'll basically continue to alienate users by pulling this kind of crap and then cracking down on illegal file sharing. They're not just shooting themselves in the foot, they're very likely killing their own future viability. Big name artists are already starting to release self-published records, and eventually music labels may become obsolete completely. The crap that they're pulling will only speed their demise.

On a slightly unrelated note, I feel the same way about NBC pulling its content from iTunes. More greedy corporate crap. What I like about Apple is that they try to provide real value to users instead of just trying to milk them as much as they can.
 
It's getting voted down because it's pepsi instead of coke,
nothing to do with itunes vs. amazon!

Eww, Pepsi, who drinks that crap? :rolleyes:

Kidding aside, I am glad to see the push for DRM free music.
Bigger news was the tidbit about Walmart coercing
the labels to offer DRM free music.

Coca-Cola and iTunes!
 
mandoman said:
It's getting voted down because it's pepsi instead of coke,
nothing to do with itunes vs. amazon!

Eww, Pepsi, who drinks that crap? :rolleyes:

Kidding aside, I am glad to see the push for DRM free music.
Bigger news was the tidbit about Walmart coercing
the labels to offer DRM free music.

Coca-Cola and iTunes!
Click to expand...

I'm all in favor of DRM free music, but as an audiophile of sorts, I despise MP3 in all of its variants. MP4 (AAC) is clearly superior at any given bit rate, and at Apple iTunes DRM-free data rate (256KB), it is almost (but not quite) AIFF in quality.

Admittedly, listening to music on most cheesy earbuds does little to expose fidelity flaws, but since it appears that we are headed to a downloaded music (and video) world with CD's and even DVD discs disappearing, we should be pushing for the highest quality format we can get. And MP3 ain't it!

Eddie O
 
iTunes and Coca-Cola ran a similar campaign this past summer in Japan.

I bought 30 bottles of Coke and won a grand total of 3 iTunes download codes. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back