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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
1. Gift them ...
2. Beowulf cluster
3.
4. Profit!?
Seriously though, you'd run out of people you felt close enough to to give them an iPod before you ran out.
And I think 10,500 songs counts as a lifetime supply.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Rumor had it that they had overstocked their inventory of iPods and needed to get rid of them. Is this just a quiet way of getting rid of them
Yep. They overstocked by 10 units and they need to unload them stat.
Sincerely,
Jeve Stobs.
Just because something is free doesn't mean that it's valueless.
The RIAA will be handing out lawsuits for every 100,000th download on a p2p network, leading up to the public beheading of the person who download the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th song.
much like the bottle caps you could see the bottoms of before buying, this scheme has an obvious flaw.
Just buy 100,000 songs and hey, free ipod!
10 iPods make you 10 times as cool.......which is, of course, why I need so desperately to win.
I HAVEN'T HAD A DATE IN 6 MONTHS!
"Lame" - Galaxar
Why not give away a nice Dual G5 system with the 30 inch cinema display instead of 10 iPods. What would you do with 10 iPods anyway? I mean 1 or 2 iPod's would be nice but 10??
>The person who downloads the 500 millionth song wins 10 free iPods, a gold 10,000-song gift card...
...and gets to visit the iPod factory run by the mysterious Steve Wonka?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
We already know of a way to get 10,000 free songs. Your gimmicks ain't flyin'.
Not sure I'd want to win this. You get what "$10K" worth of music, $3K worth of ipods, probably a grand for the concert stuff. Boom - you owe the IRS 20% of $14000.
Rumor had it that they had overstocked their inventory of iPods and needed to get rid of them. Is this just a quiet way of getting rid of them through promotions and suckering people into buying songs? Sounds like it to me.
Nah, Apple isn't that generous. They've sold something like 450M songs to date, so they still have 50M to go before they hit the 500M jackpot. One iPod for every 100K songs, and a 10 iPod mega prize adds up to only 510 give-away iPods. Apple sells a couple million iPods a year, so I don't think 510 is going to make a dent in any sort of inventory they might have.
The RIAA is sure to notice any company that gives away 10,500 songs...
;0]
Sorry, the proper Slashdot response is "Finally, I can make a Beowulf cluster of iPods", or Cool, now I can stripe them together for a fast yet tiny battery powered web server!
My other car is a Popemobile
Currently at 478 million downloads, the max amount of iPods would be about 230 (10 + 22million / 100K), but your point is valid.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
iTunes API comprehensive?a _Structure);
while (totaldownloads != 500000)
{
download_random_song(Mother_in_Law_Creditcard_Dat
totaldownloads++;
printf("Now I can havea beowulf cluster of iPods!\n");
}
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
Oh sure, when Apple gives away 500 million songs it's called a promotion but when I do it the RIAA gets involved.
Let's see how much this promotion would cost Apple:
500 million / 100,000 songs = 500 winners
500 winners * (50 songs * $0.80 per song + $100 per iPod mini) = $70,000
Gold gift card = $8,000
10 iPods = $1,000
Coldplay tickets = $0 cuz Coldplay is teh suck.
Total cost = $79,000, considerably less than a single 30-second prime time spot.
So Apple thanks you for the free advertising on this highly read online forum!
Well, sure you'd rather win something worth $150k than $9,900, which is what 10,000 songs costs. They're not claiming it's worth untold millions.
The marginal cost to Apple may be small, but 10,000 songs are still 10,000 songs, and they're worth something to you, assuming you listen to music. The music's pretty tangible.
The marginal cost may be zero, but the amortized cost is not. They can't give you the next song without having paid for the servers, the software, the music studios, the advertising, etc.
If your goal is not so much to have stuff as to make make sure you're socking it to the guys giving you the prize, well, I'm sure Apple is very sorry. If you write to jobs@apple.com, he'll send you a gift certificate to be redeemed for a free iTunes song ($.99 processing fee applies.)
(And just for reference, contests with a house as a prize rarely actually give away a house. If you read the rules closely, you'll find that you can take cash instead. Nearly everybody takes the cash.)
Everyone seems to be forgetting that this prize package will be considered income to the winner's federal government. I'm an ignorent american, so I can't speak for other countires, but I'm fairly sure that if an american wins, Apple will file the proper paperwork with the IRS... pretty soon the $9900+iPods+concert trip ~= $15000 "free" prize package is going to cost the "winner" almost $5000 in income taxes.
If I won, I would have to forefit the prize because there is NO WAY I could afford to pay the taxes on it.
Now, if Apple were to be giving away a car, I could at least borrow money to pay the taxes, then sell the car to pay off the loan, and keep the balance for myself. There's not much I can do with $9900 of "free" music.
Bastards. I hope this leads to an iTunes boycott.
I never win anything anyway. Hell, I can't even get MOD points and look how they give those away.
I can just see the personal ad now:
Go on a date with me, win an ipod.
I'm an ignorent american
In fact, I'm so ignorent that I misspelled "ignorant".
I think it's time for a break...
It's convenient. I can go surfing around in iTMS, find a song I want, and be listening to it 20 seconds later. All at three in the morning from the comfort of my home.
With CDs the best case is that I order it from amazon.com and get it a few days later, along with 10 other tracks on the disc which I may or may not want. Worst case, I have to drive to the store and stand in line to pay.
iTMS wins the convenience and simplicity battle hands-down.
I never resell CDs, they just aren't worth enough to make it worth the bother. With iTMS tracks I don't waste space on storing physical media I never use.
No, it'd just be following the law. In the United States, giveaways like this have to be on a "no purchase necessary" basis so as not to run afoul of federal and state gambling laws.
I know a number of people who posted lies as Anonymous Cowards and had their testicles explode. Absolute, unimpeachable fact, my friend.
I wouldn't be playing so fast and loose with the boys if I were you, AC.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Really? A friend of mine told me that this guy once used iTunes and woke up in a bathtub of ice without one kidney.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
"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*
I could give them to my girlfriend, but she works for the music industry and gets her music for free
The true slashdotter in me doesn't know if I should hate you for sleeping with the enemy or just plain hate you for sleeping with a member of the opposite sex.
You would have made my life a lot easier if you were sleeping with a male indie-artist who got screwed over by a RIAA company.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. - but you still need itunes .
How To Enter. You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by: 1) downloading a song from iTunes (any free downloads will be deemed an ineligible entry); or 2) a free alternative means of sending an e-mail to Apple at itunes500@apple.com via the iTunes "Tell a Friend" feature (a song download or Tell a Friend e-mail will be deemed an "Entry(ies)"). The "Tell a Friend" feature can be easily accessed at iTunes by selecting a song, and clicking the "Tell a Friend" link that is displayed for that song. One Entry will be automatically submitted for each song downloaded or Tell a Friend e-mail sent. The Promotion begins following the downloading of the 480,000,000th iTunes song, and ends with the downloading of the 500 millionth Entry ("End Date"). Only Entries submitted in this time period will be accepted.
Cynical side of me sees attempt to drum up more sales.
Realistic side... sees attempt to drum up more sales.
That's because you're outside of the Jobs Reality Distortion Field(tm). If you were inside it (where you're *SUPPOSED* to be) you would in fact see this for what it really is - a selfless attempt by Apple to bring about world peace.
Come. Join is. Everything is happy here. And made of white plastic - which is a bonus.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
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)
They were only ever possibly technically legal in Russia (those madatory licensing laws don't give the rights for world wide distribution, as the Russian rights holders for the works do not hold the copy rights for the works in other jurisdictions), and even there, Moscow Police & the City Prosecutor have concluded that they are violating Russian law, as those same mandatory licensing laws are not held to cover online distribution. However, as it is a civil matter, the individual rights holders are going to need to file suit against the company.
In short, I have very little desire to give my credit card information to a Russian outfit that is violating both international and local Russian laws.