iTunes and Pepsi Promo: Watch out!

Why Apple has me running in Circles...

Published on February 27, 2005 By dissimuloorator In WinCustomize Talk

OK so I was in the store the other day and bought a drink, and won (subjective term) a free song from iTunes. I read the blurb on the Pepsi bottle, and not only did I have a chance at getting a song, but I have a chance at winning an iPod Mini as well. There is going to be one given away every hour. Sounds good to me, I thought. I wouldn't mind having one of those cute little players, although I am sure it would get swiped (ahem... borrowed)by my Daughter or Wife.

So I pop home and fire up FireFox, and cruise on over to Apple iTunes, to enter the cap code and get into the drawing for the iPod Mini. I could care less about the free song, not wanting to put the cart before the apple cart. (No pun intended) So there on the front page of the iTunes Site is the Pepsi banner, right at the top. I click the link and get routed around to another page. Click another link, and iTunes decides it isn't going to play nice with FireFox. I then open it in IE, and try to get my code entered. Guess What? You have to install the iTunes Software, all 12 Mbs of it. What a farce that is. You have to jump through a EULA, into the iTunes Storefront and then click on the Pepsi logo.... OK so now I am a little perturbed. Not wanting to dink around with this software for too long, I take a quick peek into Task Manager to see its' memory usage. Well Damned if it hasn't installed not only iTunes the Program But an iTunes Service, and Apple Quicktime.

All this to get a free song (which I didn't use and an entry for an iPod.) Not to mention having to enroll into the iTunes Store Database, and provide all my Personal Information. Be aware this isn't free. Even though I unchecked all the (Send me crap) links, I'll bet ya I get something in the old email, from Apple or Pepsi, in the near future. Yeah Right...You've won a free Song. Not to mention the Drink Cost me $1.50, and the time and Bandwidth consumed to go through that Circle Jerk at the Apple Site. Damn I hope I win that iPod Mini, just for the aggrevation factor, alone.

Comments (Page 2)

horiz0n

on Mar 03, 2005

anyways, whats winamp do that itunes doesn't, haven't used it in like a year.

Gusteau

on Mar 03, 2005

Ok, maybe I can see having to download that software if it was just for the song, since the song could be made in a iTunes-only format. But then again, you shouldn't HAVE to, there could be a suggested download link: We suggest using iTunes for listening to this song... or something like that. But the contest? Come on...

Um... the songs your getting from iTunes is in an .m4p format, so unless you just want the file and don't want to listen to it, you're kinda going to need iTunes.

Actually, if you don't want to download iTunes, just snail mail me your winning caps and I'll download them for you

You're talking different things there. ITunes is a product, whether it's free or not is irrelevant. It's force-feeding people to install the product in order to get the "free" song and enter the contest. Try this one for size: you get your lotery ticket and it tells you to go to XYZ's web site to see if you won. Once there you realise you have to install ThemeXP to see if you've won. How wrong is that? Anyway, I just see it as an unethical practice. Legal maybe, but unethical.
BTW: I don't care about this specific contest in general, I don't even think they have that promo up here in iglooland. And if they had it, I wouln't even be interested, neither by the free song nor by the contest. I'm just commenting it as a general practice. Forcing your product down people's throat is wrong.

Not sure where you're at, but where I come from they call this practice capitalism. Quite popular too, I might add.

People complaining about getting something free. I love it

horiz0n

on Mar 03, 2005

I just noticed that change, used to be aac.

Eroticus Prime

on Mar 03, 2005

.m4p is the file extension for an AAC file using Apple's FairPlay DRM.

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