Superbowl promo: free music from Amazon
At the Super Bowl next month, the music industry will be switching teams — from Apple to Amazon.com. The major record labels lined up with Pepsi-Cola and Apple four years ago to give away 100 million songs through Apple’s online store, unveiling the promotion in a Super Bowl commercial with music from the band Green Day. The effort helped spread the word about Apple’s iTunes offerings. Pepsi’s promotion is back this year on a much bigger scale — but with the star wattage provided by Justin Timberlake instead of Green Day, and Amazon in place of Apple. The switch is an indicator of the continuing tension between the music industry and Apple. Pepsi’s earlier ad, set to Green Day’s version of the song “I Fought the Law,” prodded music fans to quit pirating music online and instead buy songs — legally — from Apple’s then-fledgling iTunes.
Four years later, iTunes is by far the biggest digital music store, and the industry is taking a liking to Amazon’s rival music service, introduced in September. In the promotion, to be announced Monday, consumers who buy Pepsi drinks will receive points that can be redeemed for music downloads at a special section of the Amazon site. Amazon and Pepsi, a brand of PepsiCo, will give away up to a billion songs, along with prizes like DVDs and electronics, though only a fraction of the eligible Pepsi packages are expected to be redeemed. Amazon is expected to pay the record companies around 40 cents for each track that is given away in the Pepsi offer; Amazon’s usual payment ranges from 65 to 70 cents, executives briefed on the deal said.
Source: NY Times
Comments(8)
All long as they make enough money to finance lavish parties, and drug lifestyles for their artists and executives, the record labels are willing to switch provider, this time to Amazon.
coke is better
Does anyone on this site care about this information what so ever?
Also its funny how they say they are losing millions yet here they are giving away a billion dollars lmfao..
“…pay the record companies around 40 cents for each track”
Yeah, and last time i heard, only ~2 cents of that goes to the artist.
Thats why i pirate. Greedy f*ckin rec labels.
no, nonamo, that’s not why you pirate. it’s a convenient and morally superior excuse.
The correct thing to do would be to donate money directly to the artists which create the songs you like.
Who really buys CDs these days anyway though. Its more trouble ripping a CD to get it on a portable media device than it is to download the song already in MP3 format.
That is their problem.
people who want quality sound and not lossless mp3’s buy cd’s. if you can’t hear the difference between the two then it doesn’t matter …