Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
The age old question has just been answered.
Ronald McDonald DOES read SlashDot.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
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.
'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.'