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McDonald's Billion-Song iTunes Giveaway
camperslo writes "The New York Post online
has this story.
"Less than a month after Pepsi announced a blockbuster deal to give away 100 million downloads from Apple's iTunes music service to its customers, McDonald's is close to a announcing a much bigger deal"." No matter what you think of iTunes, this is tremendous publicity for music on demand services in general. If the public gets a taste for it, this could be the beginning of the end for the audio CD.
Internet shopping is becoming really widespread. If the public gets a taste for it, this could be the end of malls.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
this could be the beginning of the end for the audio CD.
...but what if you like the audio CD? what if you prefer lossless music, with coverart, booklet and printed media you can hold in your hand?
Mike
Except for the fact that a lot of good indie labels and songs are on iTunes now as well.
this could be the beginning of the end for the audio CD
I really hope not! At least with CD's I can still rip to whatever audio format I prefer, in whatever quality level I wan't. Can't do what with AAC files. (Well you could, but transcoding music can degrade the quality quite a bit)
It's also nice having something real, instead of a file that you may or may not own. Or worse, can disappear or become unplayable for who knows what reason they'd cook up.
to get hold of when they win their lawsuit against Apple for stealing their name..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I dont think elimination of the origional media is the intent, or even direction this is heading. Elimination of the current distrobution system however.... The internet gives of a way to distribute media which can be digitized at a fraction of the cost it takes to distribute it traditionally. With the cd-burner costing next to nothing nowadays, internet distrobution seems to me like a fantastic idea.
Except for the fact that a lot of good indie labels and songs are on iTunes now as well.
I highly doubt they are going to be kind enough to give away just ANY free download. I'm sure they are already entered talks with various record labels about which bands will get pushed. I'll get you are going to wind up with about 200-500 different offerings to choose from through the McD's promotion.
However if they Do let me take and old song that I want when I buy a value meal, I could see myself eating there more often, even though the food tastes like masking tape.
Whatever journalist wrote this should be sent home without lunch!
What the hell do you mean unclear?
Here, let's take a stab; Pepsi Co. announces 1 million song giveaway via redeemable codes on their three main product bottle caps. 1 in 3 caps will have a code valued at $0.99. Hundreds of thousands of iTunes Music Store users are now poised and ready to only drink and purchase Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Sierra Mist for the duration of the promotion because there really is no reason to purchase any other product since none of them are possibly giving you back $3 worth of music per 6 pack!
McDonalds announces promotion where the purchase of any combo meal will include a peel off sticker on the french fry container with 1 code redeemable for a free song valued at $0.99 at the ITMS. Promotion to continue until 1 billion free songs are given away. Millions of iTunes Music Store customers now opt for lunch at McDonalds since it's the only fast food offering where a $4 happy meal includes a $1 song reward. There's no reason to eat at Burger King.
You can watch for these bottle caps and happy meal stickers to be auctioned off enmase on eBay about 3 hours after the first promotion starts.
Collecting iTunes Music Store free song promotion codes will become the new baseball card of the 2004 summer.
Well considering that the deal between Apple and Pepsi allow you to use the credit on any song you want, I am betting that the McDonalds deal is going to be similar.
Sapere aude!
I seem to recall some jaded audiophiles griping about how limited digital sound was... ;)
You are inventing restrictions of the giveaway with no basis in fact. You make a statement about how you "doubt they are going to be kind enough to give away just ANY free download." You then use that statement to back up your belief that "they are already entered talks with various record labels about which bands will get pushed." Why spread FUD?
The previous arrangement with Pepsi lets you download whatever you want. Apple has stated repeatedly that they want to give all labels equal exposure (as in you can't buy better placement) in the Music Store.
t'nera semordnilap
Maybe, maybe not. The last figures I saw showed that 45% of sales were toward full album purchases. iTunes is selling a lot of singles, but there are also a good deal of whole albums being sold.
Not only that but this will actually serve to push albums back into the main stream. It will no longer be profitable for a band to have 1 or 2 good songs and then poop out 9 mediocre ones to fill an album. Now if you want to sell an entire album you will make an entire album of quality songs. Those bands that concentrate on the super singles will find themselves left in the dust, since a single makes 1/10th the amount a full album does.
Sapere aude!
I'd wait for confirmation before getting all excited about this. Isn't the NY Post the paper that printed an editorial congratulating the Red Sox on beating the Yankees in the ALCS? Perhaps it's really Burger King that's giving out Hillary Rosen action figures instead...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
According to Dutch news, DVD sales have exceeded CD-Audio sales this year.
One popular Dutch artist is actually going to stop putting his music on CD, going DVD-only. (only returning to CD if DVD sales, against expectancy, aren't high enough)
There's several reasons for this
- DVDs cost about as much as DVD-audios here
- You get a LOT more value for money (various performances, videos, interviews, etc.)
- They think it's a little bump in the way of piracy.
The latter, as far as the music goes, is of course pointless to the educated masses.
But given the choice between
A. an 'expensive' DVD-R, spending quite a bit of time downloading the content, and optionally printing things out
or
B. the original without all the fuss, for not all *that* much money
I think B is going to be a choice for many.
The end of CD audio, at least here, started when people realized they were getting little value for money when compared to alternatives such as DVDs.
Downloading music won't kill the audio CD. There are many audiophiles out there that spend lots of $$$ on high quality sound equipment. Downloaded music quality won't (in the near future) come anywhere close to the quality of the CD.
Additionally with the new formats of digital audio media coming (like Super AudioCD) it's not likely that the size of the audio will decrease. There will ALWAYS be a market for the actual media. Look at the record itself... It's still around (mostly because of the audiophiles).
... [Insert decent Sig]
Supposing online shopping were to completely replace malls, there's no way those jobs would be replaced. Think of all the salespeople, managers, custodians, security, and everyone else that works at a mall.
Just considering the salespeople, consider how long it takes to help a customer find what they're looking for, ring them up, chit-chat with them, etc. How long does it take a delivery guy to deliver a package?
Also, even if delivery jobs can't be outsourced, (1) neither can jobs in malls, and (2) the people owning, running, and espeicially building online stores can be outsourced.
In short, you're on crack.
I wonder if it's less overhead for Apple to do it this way. When I buy a song with my credit card from the store directly, some small percentage of the $0.99 must be going towards credit card fees, etc. When they do it through retail vendors like McDonalds and Pepsi, they probably get a fat (overhead-free) check from those folks, who in turn absorb the overhead of collecting that cash.
Sure, there are other costs invovlved in managing that kind of program, but if Apple sets it up well, they could actually be increasing their profit by making the retail vendors pay for some of those costs.
Sure, Apple takes the hit on the bandwidth costs, but how much do you want to bet that at least half of these people buy another track besides the free ones while they are at the store? And how many more of those millions of people are going to come back once they see how easy it is to buy music?
I seriously can't believe that there isn't anyone among the management and sales force of all these major studios that realizes the stupidity of their views.
Well, either stupidty or just sheer terror at change and seeing entire layers of management and middlemen made obsolete and jobless :)
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
Well let's see:
1,000,000,000 songs at $.99 each is $990,000,000
Of course, from what we've learned, with major record labels, the label keeps $.80 of the price, so this deal, if every single song is redeemed and done so on a RIAA song (I don't know that all RIAA labels keep the $.80 but it might be a safe assumption), then the RIAA labels make $800,000,000 off of this deal.
And Apple makes $190,000,000. Not chump change, but nowhere near a billion dollars. Plus Apple has to pay for bandwidth and hardware to meet that demand (I think a billion downloads would fry even well-ventilated Beowulf clusters, to say nothing of G5's).
Still, perhaps this is the economy of scale boost needed to finally win over the old RIAA.
And to think it all came from McDonald's and Pepsi.
Schnapple