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McDonald's Denies Deal With iTunes
fdiv_bug writes "Turns out, according to a press release, that the iTunes Music Store/McDonald's deal mentioned earlier today was only a rumor. A swing and a miss for the New York Post." It sounded pretty plausible, even if the cost was roughly 50% more than McDonald's usual yearly advertising expenditures.
do deals? Announce a deal idea on /., watch the community debate it, get a bunch of ideas from it. Free brainstorming from the /. community.
1. Invent boy band
2. Tie download of boy band song to Happy Meals
3. Profit!
I happen to know that the deal was for real, but that the contract was stored on an external FireWire drive that was connected to a iBook running Panther, which is the same thing as saying it was deleted.
(or was it lost when saved using Panther's new FileVault feature, which acts as an auxiliary trash can? To be honest, I forget now.)
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Not that McDonalds is much better. Or any better, actually.
This was a definite non-denial denial. "There are no agreements to announce" doesn't say anything about agreements under consideration, etc.
Also, I seriously doubt that McDonalds would pay $1 billion for $1 billion songs, first there's gotta be a volume discount in the billions, second, not every song is going to be redeemed so it doesn't make any sense that they would pay for the songs that don't get bought.
While it's hard to tell from a press release that's been groomed by a PR department of a major international corporation, I still sense that this isn't a very strong denial.
All the press release says is that they haven't announced anything yet, and that the reports are speculation. (This is something we all knew ANYWAY.) This could've been released to deflate expectations a bit before the real announcement.... or it in fact could be that they have no plans to do the iTMS deal.
In either case, I'm not getting my hopes up, but then again, I didn't have my hopes up when the rumor first floated. I figured that if the deal would happen, it probably wouldn't happen right away.
Ergh! I started playing it and I didn't know I had my speakers up so loud. The pain!
hey!
WE LIED
I've been at the counter of my local McDonalds since reading the press release, waiting to get my free iTunes, and now I stink of grease!
Thanks Apple!
At least we can still dream about Superdriving our combo and ordering a Big iMac and files to go with it.
I think everyone would have to wonder if McDonalds just pulled this stunt to get some free publicity. 1. Pretend you're being a nice company and deal out free music 2. Deny it, and save yourself the money. 3. Create media attention to suck in everyone 4. ??? 5. Profit!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
DES MOINES, Iowa (Dow Jones)--McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD - News) characterized a published report that it plans a massive digital song giveaway promotion as "pure speculation."
/. issues a retraction, try RTFD (Reading the F**king Dictionary). Can we set up some kind of dictionary fund for /. editors? Like this or this?
It's "pure speculation". Notice they didn't say anything against/for it. Speculation is a very neutral term. Merriam Webster says:
Speculation: an act or instance of speculating
And speculating means: to meditate on or ponder a subject
McD is still WORKING ON IT! Doesn't mean they've decided one way or another, it's just that they're thinking about IT! Before
The age old question has just been answered.
Ronald McDonald DOES read SlashDot.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
The cost would be negligible if it worked like that, but what Pepsi did, and what McDonalds is preported to do, is pay for the songs just as everyone else with no discounts.
Both Pepsi and McDonald's are paying Apple's retail price of 99 cents per song, sources say.
This would be $1 billion dollars. You aren't paying for the mp3, you are paying for the liscence to have it. Although to a conglomerate like McD's maybe a billion dollars is negligible.
WiFi alone? Eh.
WiFi and free iTunes? Now there's something.
Of course, who wants to bring their computer into a greasy McDonald's and get Secret Sauce all over it while surfing the 'Net. Ew... forget I went there!
Starbucks. Those guys would do well with an iTunes promo. They've already rolled out the WiFi part of the equation.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
While I agree that the the $1 Billion figure is probably wishful thinking on the Post's part, I will say that this deal does strike me as VERY do-able. McD has given away music CDs for years during various promotions, as have other fast-food chains. I can see music giveaways in digital form taking hold very quickly.
Here is an example: Lets say the real deal is $100 Million (just like the Pepsi deal so it is not out of the realm of possibility). McD now has a block of songs that it can do whatever it wants with. If McD has a promotion where they would normally be giving away copies of a CD, they could replace it with a free download of the album from the iTMS. Apple could restrict the redemption so that only the designated album can be downloaded (making success/failure analysis quite easy).
If the promo succeeds, everyone is happy. However, if the promo fails (cuz the music sucks, for example), they would normally have piles of CDs that would just get trashed. Money wasted on production, storage, transportation, and destruction/recycling. With iTMS, they can just keep the unused downloads and repurpose them for a future event, such as a prize in the Monopoly game they run every so often.
In the end, McD has only paid for what it used. Very economical.
$1 billion seems out of line. McDonald's only is giving away $55,283,390 worth of Best Buy money, not all of which will be turned in undoubtably, in the current Monopoly Best Chance Game promotion. $54,983,390 of that will be in the form of 54,983,390 $1 pieces.
When you add it all up, there's only 55,000,000 Best Buy pieces in cirulation... and that's from a pretty full tilt campaign by McDs standards. Therefore, I think that's the reasonable cap on how many songs total McDs could give away if such a promotion happens.
'In a dawn raid on McDonaldstown by the RIAA, fictional corporate character Hamburgler was placed under arrest for downloading a number of copyrighted songs. Currently languishing in federal 'pound me in the ass' psison, Hamburglar was reported to have said in response to the allegations 'Robble robble. Robble robble robble robble robble. Robble!' No court date has yet been set.'