I Won! I Won A Free Song! [Updated With Getting The Song]

by , 5:30 PM EST, January 30th, 2004

OK, so I'm at work, see? And I'm kinda thirsty, and it's just after lunch, so I go down to the little shop that sells drinks and stuff. I'm looking at Coke, I'm looking at Dr. Pepper, I'm looking at SoBe, and then I spy the new Pepsi bottles advertising the iTunes promotion.

I say to myself, "I'm not a big Pepsi drinker, but what the heck! Let's give it a go."

So I select the bottle that I am sure has the 1 chance in 3 of having an iTunes code in the cap, and pay the nice lady behind the counter.

I'm walking back to my desk that sits in the middle of a Dilbert-esque cube farm, I say, "Hi," to people I know as I go. I stop and have a conservation about a networking issue with a colleague. After about 10 minutes, I complete the 2 minute walk back to my desk.

So I'm sitting there, and I twist off the cap and take a pull from the bottle. Only then do I re-realize that I have gotten a Pepsi. (Like I said, I'm not a big Pepsi drinker.) I look at the bottle and re-realize that I bought the Pepsi in hopes of getting one of those iTunes songs.

So I take a look inside the cap, and there is some text in there that reads like the following:

XXXXX
YYYYY
ONE FREE
SONG

So, I says to myself, "Cool!"

I don't know if I'm the first person to get an iTunes song from the Pepsi promotion, but I'm definitely one of the first few thousand. It could be that Pepsi jumped the distribution gun on this one. I haven't tried to cash in my free tune, I will try tonight and let you all know what's up.

It's kinda cool to win free stuff you can use. Go Apple! You too, Pepsi.

---

Update No. 1: So, I get home, see? And I got this half empty (or half full, depending on your point of view) bottle of Pepsi. I get out of the car and go into the house. No one is home, so I sat down at my Cube and scanned my email.

As I sat there deleting the MyDoom virus-spawned mail a thought in the back of my head kept nagging me: there was something I was suppose to do, but what?

So I fired up Safari, and pop on over to Mac Observer and read through some of the articles. I spied my article about winning a Pepsi/iTMS tune and it dawned on me; I won a tune! I need to redeem that puppy!

I then remembered that I left the Pepsi bottle with the tune-code in the cap out in the car, so I go out and get it. I sat back down in front of my Cube, fired up iTunes, and stared. I didn't see anything that obviously allowed me to redeem my cap-code for a tune.

So, I examined the bottle, there were instructions:

If you find a code under the cap:

• Go to iTunes.com and download iTunes to your PC or Mac.
  No biggy there, I already have iTunes installed. Odd that they put the PC first in that sentence though.
• Enter your code into iTunes and download your favorite song.
  Umm, Cupertino, we have a problem. Where do I enter said code in iTunes?

I sat back, took a pull from my now flat and warm Pepsi, and thought for a bit. The first thing I thought was that Pepsi tastes much better when it is cold and has some fizz. My second thought was that the promotion doesn't really start until February 1, so maybe iTunes won't accept the Pepsi codes until then. Makes sense to me, but, being the diligent gent that I am, I gave Apple a call to confirm my suspicions.

The nice folks at Apple replied, confirming my thinking; about being too early to redeem my cap, not about Pepsi tasting better cold and fizzing, although I think they would confirm that though if I asked.

So, if you buy a Pepsi before February 1, my advice is to drink the Pepsi while it is still cold and fizzy, and hold on to the cap until the promotion properly starts.

---

Update No. 2.

So, I'm up, see? It's like 2 AM on Feb. 1, and I was kicking back after a hard day of helping a friend move furniture.

I sat down in front of my Cube and I'm cruising around, and I took a pull from my beer, and I was just chillin'.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something yellow sitting among the junk on my desk (my desk is unbelievably messy. I threaten to clean it daily; empty threats.). It's the Pepsi bottle cap that has the iTune-code inside. I figured, "Hey, it's 2 AM on February 1. iTMS has got to redeem this liddle-boy now!"

So, I clicked up iTMS and, lo-n-behold, there's a big, white clickable button on the iTMS home page that has a Pepsi symbol wearing headphones. Under this rockin'-out icon are two big words, "Redeem Song." Kinda hard to miss, ya know?

I clicked on the button and I got a new screen which asked for your birthdate. I thought, "OH GAWD! It's too early in the morning for a freakin' test!"

It seems you must be 18 to redeem songs and this is how they check. Man, you can get carded even online.

So, I thought for a minute, checked my driver's license, then entered my birth date (I easily pass this test), and I got another screen that simply said, "Enter your 10-digit Pepsi code* exactly as it appears:". I thought, "Hey, I can handle this."

I entered my code and pressed the 'Submit' button. The screen changed slightly; below the place where I entered the code some words in red appeared, they said, "The code you entered is not recognized as a valid Pepsi code."

Wha'?

I looked at the code in the cap, then back at the code I typed in and instantly saw the problem. I said, "Vern, you nimrod! Ya gotta type it in EXACTLY as it appears. Jeez!"

So, I re-typeed the code, IN UPPER CASE, and hit the submit button. Nothing changed.

Hmmm. I guessed it was saying that I was still typing in the code wrong. I looked at the code in the cap again, then back at what I typed. They both looked the same.

I thought, "Well, maybe not. That could be a capital 'L' instead of a capital 'I'..."

So, I changed the 'I' to and 'L', and hit the submit button again.

Success!

The head-phone clad Pepsi icon reappeared. Under it where these words,

Then there's this big arrow pointing up to the upper right corner of the windows where, lo-n-behold, it says I have 1 song!

Absolutely sweet!

Now, what song to pick?

iTunes/Pepsi Promotion