Slashdot Mirror
1 Billion iTunes Contest
pvt_medic writes "Apple has announced their newest contest for the 1 Billionth iTunes song downloaded. Every 100,000 downloads someone will win an iPod nano and a $100 giftcard, with the grand prize being an iMac, 10 iPod (60GB), and $10,000 credit at iTunes. Looks like business is going well for Apple."
Holy CRAP that's a good prize!
It's a shame the chances of winning will be so, so slim though.
Also, it seems kinda daft. What would one person want with ten 60 gig iPods?
Peace, Love, Unity, Respect
I'm curious, what does one do with ten 60GB iPods? It seems that you keep one for yourself and sell the other 9 on eBay. Maybe give some to your friends? Maybe give an iPod to your senator?
It just seems like ten iPods is a lot for one person and will just end up being given away.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Entrants must be 13 years of age or older, and a legal resident of one of the 50 United States, including Washington, D.C., Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland or the United Kingdom.
However, if your zip code isn't 5 digits long, you probably wont receive the prize!
C'mon Apple, how US-Centric are you?...
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
Um, no. From the Official Rules:
If you believe the meter running on the above web page, it ran through 1000 songs in 112 seconds. At that rate they give out the 100,000 song prize every 3 hours 6 minutes 40 seconds. However that also means they're 61.425 days away from giving away the grand prize.
Similarly, the iMac will go to one person, 10 ipods will go to 10 people, and the $10,000 in iTunes songs will go to maybe 100 or 1000 different people.
My other first post is car post.
Good luck with your taxes in 2007.
We'll be watching.
The IRS
Looks like I didn't read the fine article. Seems the lucky winner does indeed win 10 iPods and $10,000 credit on iTMS.
My other first post is car post.
And most of them are crap.
(1,699 + (10,000*.99) + (10*399)) *.3 (ballpark) = $4,676.7
Will Apple provide low interest financing to the winner so that they can pay for the taxes? Otherwise they probably threw in the extra 9 iPods just to make it more prohibitively expensive & hope that the winner can't claim the prize.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You can tell that iTunes is being embraced by everyone when the top-selling songs are "Grillz" by Nelly, "Shake That" by Eminem and "L.O.V.E." by Ashlee Simpson.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The entry form uses a visual CAPTCHA, which is not accessible to users with visual impairment such as, say, many iPod Shuffle owners. In jurisdictions with anti-discrimination statutes, this could be considered discrimination or even violate gambling laws because for blind people, a purchase is necessary. Given that the iPod player is an audio device, wouldn't it make sense to include an audio-based alternate confirmation method?
Does anyone know if video downloads count in this contest? Winning the grand prize while downloading the latest episode of Battlestar Galatica would be awesome!
"Every 100,000 downloads someone will win an iPod nano and a $100 giftcard, with the grand prize being an iMac, 10 iPod (60GB), and $10,000 credit at iTunes. [Factually incorrect statement removed] Looks like business is going well for Apple"
.0016%. If their profit margin isn't large enough to sustain that amount with ease, then they need to look into their pricing structure.
So, for every 100,000 downloads (~$100,000.00 gross) they are giving away $50 in hardware and $100 in gift certificates. Wow, that's almost impressive.. wait, no it's not.
They'll gross just shy of $1 billion during this period, during which they will award About $161,000.00 in hardware and certificates. That's
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Mathematically challenged much? You also forgot to take into account the fact that Apple don't get to keep that dollar for themselves; the majority goes straight into the pockets of the recording companies.
Well, $10000 should be about right to fill a 60gig iPod. Since iTunes lets you copy music to an unlimited number of iPods that looks like a great eBay opportunity for an unscrupulous winner...
Stuart
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
If the billionth song is a Michael Bolton tune they are skipped and the winner will be the next one.
I sooo need the Hard drive space.
Troll nothing, its the sad truth. Shows exactly what a sad state the 'music' industry is in. I wonder how many wonderful artists are hidden away because they dont fit the tight mold it takes to sell millions these days. Just dont SUCK enough to make the cut. Actually, wherever they are, I hope they stay there.
jerry, very funneeeee guy
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me."
-- Abe Simpson
What?! Could you speak up a little bit? I'm having a little trouble hearing you over all the noise this cash is making.
Sincerely,
Steve Jobs
Let's see: $10,000 worth of virtual goods, $5500 of real goods for the grand prize. Pretty good. But what will Apple gain? For $1,000,000,000 song downloads, they gain what, 99% of that in dollars? And in addition to that, they get major publicity and an increased rate of song downloads... They should just hold these kind of contests all the time, as they lose almost nothing and gain the most important thing of all: sales and media attention. What could be better?
games journalism blog
odds of winning? 1 in a billion.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Otherwise they probably threw in the extra 9 iPods just to make it more prohibitively expensive & hope that the winner can't claim the prize.
Maybe they threw in the extra 9 iPods so you could sell them on eBay to pay the taxes?
Or maybe they don't actually care either way.
I can't believe OP missed (IMO) the coolest part of the grand prize...
Apple will create a full-ride scholarship in your name to a world-renowned music school.
Classy.
There's an interesting extra part to the Grand Prize, which isn't listed on the main page:
In addition, a scholarship will be created by Apple in the name of the Grand Prize winner to a world renowned music institution to be selected by Apple. The scholarship recipient shall receive four (4) years of tuition to a university-level program at the music department of the selected institution. The Grand Prize winner shall not be eligible to receive the scholarship or participate in determining the scholarship recipient. The scholarship shall have no monetary value to the Grand Prize winner. -- Official Rules
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Why? What did we do? Or maybe this is Apple's way of punishing Quebec for crippling Canadian politics with irrelevant and unrealistic zealotry.
It just seems like ten iPods is a lot for one person and will just end up being given away. What better way to get 9 more people hooked on buying iTunes downloads (and by extension other Apple products)?
Damages = prize * probability of payout.
Punitive damages, especially in the case of a tort that has a corresponding crime such as unauthorized gambling, can be much greater than actual damages.
Could be worse. I always feel sorry for the poor Quebecois who are always prohibited from entering these and every other contest. Stupid provincial laws.
Steve - come on - are you still peaved about this?
Quoth the modded-down AC (sadly, I think it's mildly amusing): "There's no real incentive to use iTunes, in any case, if you're not running Windows or a Mac, and even less so if you don't have an iPod."
Well, um, no. In other news, there is very little incentive to buy fuel if you don't own a car to put it in, barely a point to buying DVDs without a player of some kind, and deaf people don't buy very many CDs.
Quite what this insight has to offer the debate, I'm not sure, however.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I was looking through the source code on Apple's 1 Billion dollar site to see if there was a javascript calculator doing the counter, and I found this:
<p class="sosumi">*No purchase necessary to win. <a href="/itunes/1billion/entryform/">Click here</a> to submit a free entry form.</p>
Sosumi... mmmmm...
Imagine an iWulf clust... oh, wait.
How wonderful would it be for the billionth sale to be to someone using Sharp Musique instead of itunes. Would Apple exclude them as the winner for not using the "official" client? Could they?
Thankfully I live in a country with sane tax laws around contest winnings, which are 100% tax free.
Eligibility. In order to be eligible, entrants must be 13 years of age or older, and a legal resident of one of the 50 United States, including Washington, D.C., Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland or the United Kingdom.
What would one person want with ten 60 gig iPods?
Well they die about every 12 to 18 months on average so you'll be going through em. (Speaking from experience, just had to send in my iPod to be fixed/replaced after just over 1 year, luckily i was smart and got the extended warranty, otherwise i'd be out $400)
ipod battery: $69
ipod harddrive: $299
Planned obsolence? priceless.
Somebody's got to pay for the ground-breaking personal use restrictions.
I don't use iTMS, but if they offered lossless audio compression with downloadable PDF artwork, I might be willing to consider their price and associated sacrifices.
So, enter this contest and win a chance to buy a bunch of stuff from Apple for about $5,000 of your money and your likeness for advertising purposes.
I created a Firefox Greasemonkey user script that makes it dramatically easier to submit entries to this contest. I explain how to install and use it in Read my blog
Great script, and me with no mod points...
Thanks for the into to greasemonkey
I don't really get it. I mean, the downloads you buy up to the billionth are paying for the "free iPod" so I think it's just a big conspiracy to make more money for Apple.
>>You can tell iTunes is being embraced by everyone when the top-selling songs are
>>"Grillz" by Nelly, "Shake That" by Eminem and "L.O.V.E." by Ashlee Simpson.
>Shows exactly what a sad state the 'music' industry is in.
Wait... rap is music? Since when is talking to a beat considered music? I know I'm behind the times, but that's bad even for me! Seriously, music and rap are almost antitheses of each other. Beethoven is music. Mozart is music. The Eagles are music. Bagpipes, country, even P.D.Q. Bach... but NOT anything that's mostly percussion or where you can't quite tell what they're saying. From the little I've heard of it, rap falls neatly into both categories.
To win an iPod or the Grand Prize for the billionth song, you must buy a song each time the counter turns 100,000. The problem is: you can't rely on Apple's counter. It doesn't display the real-time count, it makes a projection based on a snapshot of the sales data over a period of 5 minutes, and that projection is always underestimated so that the counter doesn't go up and down each time the new data is released. With their method, it always goes up - but it's not accurate.
The Apple counter also relies on a 100ms timer to keep running, but if your machine is blocked doing something (like dragging a scrollbar in your browser or whatever), it stops and loses count.
I quickly fixed that over the weekend. Here is my page:
http://www.billiontunescounter.com/
It ain't pretty but so far today, it works. That should bring you one step closer to the 10 iPods and the $10,000 gift certificate. Good luck!