Looks like there’s another battle going on over music downloading. Both Pepsi and McDonald’s are offering free music downloads to their customers:
Less than a month after Pepsi announced a blockbuster deal to give away 100 million downloads from Apple’s iTunes music service to its customers, McDonald’s is close to a announcing a much bigger deal, The Post has learned.
In a dramatic move that gives a thumbs up to the music industry’s efforts at creating legal alternatives to file sharing, McDonald’s plans to give away up to 1 billion songs in a marketing campaign, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Both Pepsi and McDonald’s are paying Apple’s retail price of 99 cents per song, sources say. And McDonald’s has arranged to buy up to a billion songs to meet customer demand.
The plans by two of the largest consumer goods companies to spend a significant amount of promotional money on music sharing is a validation of Apple’s revolutionary iTunes service – and a ringing endorsement for the beleaguered music industry.
I wonder if this type of thing could be the beginning of some new business models for the music industry.
(via paidContent)