Would you like a song with those fries?American uber-food corporations McDonalds and Pepsi seem set to add a fair whack of momentum to the pay-per-download online music market by forking out for over 1 billion tracks from iTunes to use in their own promotional giveaways. McDonalds are doing the big buy, with a cap of 1 billion tunes for an upcoming promotion (it's suspected that they won't actually have to fork out for the tracks that will be available to the public, but, even so, they're expecting to hand over 'hundreds of millions' of dollars for the campaign). To this extent, the burger makers have somewhat stolen the thunder of the fizzy drink company, who announced last month they were going to give away 100 million tunes as part of a campaign they're running in February and March of 2004.

It might just become the norm that, rather than being a product unto itself, that songs become a regular 'super-sizer' for other consumer purchases. It's already been revealed that the entire iTunes store is a loss-leader (despite the US$0.99 per-track price-tag) for getting people to buy the slightly more expensive iPod. So, further down the track, 'Buy a new Sony stereo, and get 100 iTune downloads for free!!', 'Specially marked Colgate Fluroguard toothpastes will entitle you to three free downloads from BuyMusic.com'. That kinda thing. I envision a day when companies even pay for tracks en masse for promotional use - I, for one, would be keen for my employees (MetService) to pay for a few thousand copies of Bic Runga's 'Listening for the Weather' for example, to make available to people who register on our website (when we start asking people to register to use our website, of course). Companies like Air New Zealand and Telecom who have recently been using NZ music to promote their own brands (which some see as parasitic, others as useful free promotion), could actually make the relationship seem more than just band-wagon jumping by doing something similar to McDonalds, and buying a few thousand downloads - from the home of NZ MP3: amplifier.co.nz - to use as part of their promotions. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get a free song from each of the artists featured in that Telecom 'pass-the-parcel' ad, just by paying your bill on time?

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