Pepsi and Amazon have officially announced their major US MP3 giveaway promotion which will launch during the Super Bowl next month.
The promotion, to be called Pepsi Stuff, will appear on four billion Pepsi bottles and multi-packs, and will allow drinkers to collect points that will give them free downloads via Amazon's previously reported DRM-free digital music service. Although designed to launch Amazon's download offer, the points will also be redeemable on other goods sold by the e-commerce site. In terms of downloads, users will be choose from music from EMI, Warner and SonyBMG, and a load of independents. As previously reported, although Universal are signed up to Amazon's DRM-free music service, they have chosen not to participate in the Pepsi promotion.
The promotion, which will be launched with an advertising campaign featuring Justin Timberlake, echoes a similar promotion undertaken by the drinks brand with Apple's iTunes four years ago. Amazon are keen, of course, to position themselves as a serious rival to the market leader download store, their offer benefiting from [a] being able to offer DRM-free music from all four majors (Universal, in particular, have not offered DRM-free to Apple as yet) and [b] offering DRM free music in the more popular and totally device agnostic MP3 rather than Apple's AAC which, while arguably a better sound format, is not as adaptable as MP3.