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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
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.
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.
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?
What's your point? That Apple are wrong to offer a prize at all? Or that you think it's not enough? That they should offer their entire profit margin as prizes?
Remembering the breakdown of money from each song sold, I think Apple only get a few cents per track. At that rate, it's not a bad prize. It's even better for people who are just doing what they do anyway.
Maybe one of those other, competing music stores could offer a better prize for their billion mark.
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.
Fortunately, those of us in countries other than the U.S. don't necessarily have to pay taxes on winnings. This contest is open to people in Canada who would not have an extra tax burden if they won. (We already pay enough taxes!)
Apperantly the "sosumi" thing is a running joke over at Apple, it goes back to 1991, when the Beatles were suing Apple Computer. More info (as always) at WikiPedia
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