drm Archive

Pepsi is announcing a partnership with Amazon for the new Pepsi Stuff campaign. You’ve seen these before – drink 20,000 cans of Pepsi and get a song free. What’s interesting in the announcement is how they push DRM-free music and how great it is to listen to your music from anywhere and on any device.

"Pepsi Stuff gives consumers choices — many choices: from the prizes they select, to the music they want to hear, to the device they want to play it on," said Cie Nicholson, SVP and chief marketing officer, Pepsi-Cola North America. "We are excited to team up with Pepsi and reward millions of Pepsi
Stuff participants with high-quality DRM-free music downloads from major and independent labels, playable on virtually any device, and an easy downloading experience that doesn’t require special software," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music and Movies.

Do consumers really care about DRM? I’d suggest no, but it’s good that us techies are opening things up for the normal consumer.

Five "points" will equal a free song but they didn’t share any details on the number of cans for a "point". FYI, this is Pepsi’s largest campaign ever and will launch at the Super Bowl on February 3.

This week on nextNYers, Meghan sits down with NY-based Amie Street founders Elias Roman and Joshua Boltuch. Amie Street helps you find new music. Elias notes that the biggest competitor to Amie Street is actually the p2p music networks. In addition to the video interview below, check out my interview with Joshua from earlier this year.

Music on Amie Street starts free and goes up in price up to 99 cents as more people download the songs. They are also announcing expansions with Amie Street Japan and corporate sponsorships.

Check out the video interview:

Check out all of the previous nextNYers episodes along with our review of online video in NYC.