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MSN music to offer free songs

7 February 2005 7:54 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 5 comments

MSN music is countering Apple's iTunes service's Pepsi promotion by offering MSN music customers a free song in the run up to the Grammy Awards. Apple and Pepsi currently have a free track promotion for anyone who gets a winning Pepsi bottle cap, which they hope will lead to more than 200 million track give-aways. The major difference however is that iTunes will allow you to select whatever song you want for free when you have a winning cap, whereas the free MSN music will be picked by the MSN music team.

"This is also an excellent opportunity for people to discover songs they might not have tried before - so pop fans can check out an outstanding country song, or rock fans can discover some of the year's best hip-hop," Rob Bennett, senior director of MSN Entertainment said. The picks will come from the following categories: Feb. 8, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance/Best Female Pop Vocal Performance; Feb. 9, Best Rock Song; Feb. 10, Best Rap Song; Feb. 11, Best R&B Song; and Feb. 12, Best Country Song.

Somehow, the Apple iTunes/Pepsi promotion sounds a bit better to me. It seems like MSN music is hoping to pick songs to feed to their customers hoping they will like the artist they hear and go purchase more from the music store. However, they would probably pick the artists best work so I can imagine a lot of MSN music customers being disappointed after purchasing extra. Still though, it's nice to see competition is still rampant in the online legal music download market.

Source:
BetaNews

Permalink to this article

Apple adds 1000 rare Chinese tracks to iTunes (7 February 2005)

Apple and Pepsi to launch a new iTunes promo (19 January 2005)

MSN Music to offer former MP3.com's music catalog (17 November 2004)

MSN Music launched in eight European countries (4 November 2004)

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Discuss this article!
daemonzx6 (Senior Member) 7 February 2005 10:49
It doesn't seem like MSN really understands music listeners. A pop fan will not listen to country, and a rock fan will not listen to hip-hop. Their idea of making freely available songs that win grammys is also flawed. Dela makes a good point when he says its usually their best song that gets everybody listening. Then you find out their other songs suck out loud. All grammy winning artists are corporate scumbags anyway... [ + quote]
punx777 (Senior Member) 7 February 2005 13:28
yeah thats pretty retarded.. walmart has 88 cent songs :D of course, there are some songs they dont have, thats when i try to aquire some free pepsi downloads.... ive bought 3 pepsis, every one of them was a winner, strange huh? its suppose to be 1 in 3? anyway apparently you can put the pepsi at a tilt, and see if its a winner http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/ipod/pepsi-itunes-contest-the-tilt-still-works-030740.php read about it there. i heard about 200 k tracks were redeemed last time they tried to do this, so pretty much unsucessful, i know i would never feed the walking giant [apple] any of my money, ill only get an itune if its free.. [ + quote]
ashroy01 (Senior Member) 7 February 2005 16:02
that's nice, but what are you supposed to do with the pepsi? [ + quote]
punx777 (Senior Member) 7 February 2005 16:56
i guess you can drink it, give it to the needy, or dump it out and fill it with coke(since cokes better) [ + quote]
cmmnsense (Inactive) 24 February 2005 14:56
I'm on my ninth frickin' pepsi and have one 3 "buy one get one free" caps (1 in 6) and haven't one a single itune, damn it! I like pepsi so I would buy it anyway, but i'd like to get some damn songs. [ + quote]