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."

Comments

free entries

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

The best part is for those who don't buy into these contests is that you can use the free downloads for entry.

Um, no. From the Official Rules:

How To Enter. You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by: 1) downloading a song from iTunes (any music video or other video downloads and any free downloads will be deemed an ineligible entry); or 2) a free alternative means of entry by completing an online entry form available at http://www.apple.com/itunes/1billion/entryform/ (a song download or free online entry will be deemed an "Entry(ies)").

Hah.

[Elwood P Dowd]

(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.

Re:Hah.

[tbone1]

Not being from America I have no idea how your tax system works...

That's okay, neither do we.

Re:Doing Well?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Suddenly companies are required to give away a substantial proportion of their earnings in contents?

Not to mention your definition of "gross" is a little off since they only get $0.33/song, the rest going to the labels. Then they pay for bandwidth, maintenance, managers, etc. So how much "profit" they are making is up for question, not that it makes the prize worth 50% of their earnings or anything.

Re:Entry open to...

[kahanamoku]

http://www.apple.com/itunes/1billion/entryform/

The MZFinance.MZAlternateEntryForm.Zip field must be at least 5 characters.

I mean, no mention of the scholarship?

[l3prador]

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.

Re:Doing Well?

[RingDev]

My point was not to rag on Apple, but to rag on the summary writer and editor. The summary was factually incorrect and made it sound like this give away was a sign of Apple's financial strength.

I don't mind taking the ocasional troll rating, but atleast let people understand what I was trolling!

-Rick

Re:The Trade-offs

[falcon5768]

no cause Apple only gets about 15 cents to every dollar if Im not mistaken while the record company/artist gets the rest.

Re:The Trade-offs

[humajime]

Lets not forget the fact that it costs them 9 out of the 15 cents they make to pay for the storage of the songs and the bandwidth to send you the songs. Oh yeah, and lets also not forget everyone they have to pay to make this server work (coders, network engineers, PR people, customer service). They make something like 2-3% on songs. On a .99 cent song, thats 2 pennies.

Re:The Trade-offs

[HarvardAce]

no cause Apple only gets about 15 cents to every dollar if Im not mistaken while the record company/artist gets the rest.

You had a typo there. It should have read:
no cause Apple only gets about 15 cents to every dollar if Im not mistaken while the record company/RIAA gets the rest.