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Apple's 500 Million Songs
Paul H. writes "Apple is giving away an iPod Mini and a 50-song gift card to whomever purchases every 100,000th song on iTunes, until they reach 500 million downloads. The person who downloads the 500 millionth song wins 10 free iPods, a gold 10,000-song gift card, and 10 additional 50-song gift cards for the iPods. To top it off, the winner gets 4 first row Coldplay tickets with back-stage passes."
Find a song, do the "tell a friend" feature and type in "itunes500@apple.com" as the friend to email. Each time you do it, it is an entry. -Nick
-nick
If I win the free 10,000 songs that works out to roughly a $10,000 value. Do I have to pay taxes on it?
Also, beware of iTunes and using your credit card for it. I know a number of people who had their credit cards stolen through iTunes. I wouldn't take that risk and rather use any good P2P software.
Exactly. Why let some no name steal your credit card number when you can have the RIAA sue you AND infest your computer with a multitude of trojans and spyware!
It's all about return on investment people.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Are 10,000 songs automagically worth $10k? Seriously, how is that determined? If Starbucks gives me a free lifetime supply of coffee, do I owe them 20% of $infinity?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
"I don't know anyone who buys downloadable music online. I was just wondering if I could hear some pro arguaments about downloadable music against actually having the CD. (I know you don't technically own the music, but it's still there in your hands and I feel that means something.)"
I do. But mainly through Pepsi/Mountain Dew and 7Eleven promotions.
I don't like buying CDs because often times, I only want one song. Buying that one song online "rewards" the artist a little, but definitely more than downloading that same song via a P2P network. Buying music online also will hasten the demise of the CD, and hopefully increase the strength of Apple to negotiate the fees the RIAA charges, or ultimately cuts the RIAA/labels out since artists would not longer need those middle-men if all music were commercially available online. Buying the CD only props up the RIAA's business model with sales statistics. Plus, I listen to music through my iPod, and it seems like every music label is trying to thwart the person's legal right to back up their media purchase and/or convert/transfer the music over to a more portable digital format such as MP3, OGG, or unencrypted AAC (FLAC, ALAC, etc.).
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Look again:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/volumesongs/
I'd also question the actual value of the gift card for tax purposes... it's probably significantly less than $10k.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Last year the counter was so far behind that people were fooled into buying songs long after the possibility to win was actually there. They had contacted the winner, given him his prize, and gotten pictures of him w/ it days before their webpage counter hit its target.
I wrote a simple Perl program that extrapolates when each of the upcoming 100,000 songs will be purchased. It's probably quite wrong, but it was fun to write. I posted the code and the results in my blog. To sum up, my program predicts number 500 million will be at Fri Jul 15 05:09:29 2005 CDT (US/Central time)