by , 12:00 PM EST, November 6th, 2003
The announcement of Pepsi's upcoming plan to give away 100 million music downloads from Apple's iTunes Music Store was a big step for the Cupertino computer company because of the sudden competition from services like Napster 2.0 in the downloadable music market. Apple has moved from steps to leaps with today's announcement from McDonald's. CBS Marketwatch is reporting that the hamburger chain plans to trump Pepsi and give away up to 1 billion songs. From the article:
McDonald's Corp. (MCD) plans to give away up to 1 billion songs to customers after PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) announced a deal to give away 100 million downloads from Apple's iTunes music service, the New York Post said on Thursday.
Both the soft-drink maker and the fast-food company are paying Apple's (AAPL) retail price of 99 cents per song in their marketing campaigns, The Post reported, citing unnamed sources.
As with other fast-food prize giveaways, not every prize will be claimed but McDonald's is still expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the promotion.
UPDATE:
Shortly after Reuters reported the possible 1 Billion song promotion, a story at Yahoo! Finance was published with McDonald's Corp. claiming the story is "pure speculation." From the article:
McDonald's issued a statement saying, "There are no agreements to announce, so anything else is pure speculation."
[...]
McDonald's statement said it "continues to aggressively pursue bold new initiatives in the areas of music, sports, fashion and entertainment to connect with our customers in fresh and relevant ways...You can expect news from McDonald's on a variety of fronts in the coming weeks and months."
For the moment, forget about the massive mindshare Apple and iTMS will be getting during those two promotions. Think about about the fact that both Pepsi and McDonald's are paying full price for each download and that up until now Apple had been excited about selling a few million songs. Of course, every free music download prize won't be redeemed but try to wrap your mind around that number. 1 billion! With sales of that scale and the sheer promotional tidal wave from the two food giants, it's not hard to predict that all other music downloading services will be running far behind.
It may not be long before you see the familiar "Over 1 billion served" sign hanging at 1 Infinite Loop instead of under the Golden Arches.
UPDATE:
It may be too early to celebrate on this one but notice that McDonald's merely said there were 'no agreements to announce." (yet?)