• London Times, Thursday, December 6, 2007 11:19 AM

Pepsi is believed to be teaming up with Amazon.com--the online retailer vying with Apple's iTunes music store--to give away up to 1 billion digital music tracks as part of a year-long marketing campaign. It is also thought that the music will be distributed free of the digital rights management (DRM) technology that limits where downloaded tracks can be played.

Pepsi's promotion is to start in February in concert with the Super Bowl. It echoes a giveaway in 2003, in which Apple and Pepsi offered 100 million free tracks. Since Amazon began its download service in September, it has captured an estimated 3% of the market; Apple accounts for about 80%.

PepsiCo is planning to place tokens on five billion drink containers. Consumers will have to collect five tokens to qualify for free tracks. In theory, the campaign could flood the market with $1 billion of free music (Apple charges 99 cents per track), but redemption rates on these types of offers are usually low, at about 2%.

Read the whole story at London Times »