BuyMusic CEO: It Won’t Be Apple Driving The Music Download Business

December 21st, 2003 at 2:00 PM - News by Bryan Chaffin

Would you ever buy a Pepsi? What if you got free music out of the deal? Pepsi and other companies are betting on such promotions to help push even more product, according to an article at Reuters. In addition to the Apple-Pepsi deal, Miller Brewing has teamed up with Roxio to give away Napster-branded portable MP3 players. According to the article, such campaigns are in the works for airlines, credit card companies, and even McDonaldis. From Reuters:

The promotions come at a time when brand marketers, particularly beverage companies, are looking to establish broad connections between music and their products -- a strategy well-served by digital music giveaways.

Music giveaways are understood to foster customer loyalty. Whatis more, they provide consumers with powerful incentives to use the related products, executives say.

The trend has major implications for the nascent digital music business.

Campaigns from Pepsi, Miller and others can educate consumers about online music in a way that is outside the scope of most digital music companies, Apple aside.

Whatis even more interesting is that BuyMusic (BM) CEO Scott Blum says that it will be these giveaways, and not Apple or the iTMS, that drives the market. From the article:

"Youire going to see lots of free music given out via third-party companies," buymusic.com founder Scott Blum says. "Itis not going to be Apple and iTunes driving the business. Itis going to be companies like Pepsi and other third parties that are promoting digital music on bottle caps and on labels."

Earlier this month, Mr. Blum also noted that he and his Windows Media-using peers in the online music service business werenit coming close to Appleis 1.5 million downloads per week.

You can read the full article at Reuters.