"Coca-Cola is launching an Internet music download service in Britain next month, the first consumer brand to jump into Europe's crowded Internet music market, the company said on Monday.

"The soft drinks giant said that in January it will begin selling music downloads from a catalog of 250,000 songs supplied from each of the five major music labels."

Coke's main rival, PepsiCo Inc., will join forces with Apple's iTunes download service in a 100-million-song "under-the-cap" giveaway beginning in February. The Apple service is not available in Europe.

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Pricing details haven't been released yet on Coke's plan.

I've gotta say that, initially, the idea of Coke now being an "authorized" music source grates on me just for general purposes.

Unless this, along with several other recent developments, is the beginning of the end of the labels as we know them.

The Rolling Stones chose to distribute their latest CD through Best Buy. Walmart is getting into the music biz. Now Coke and Pepsi are jumping in.

What's the difference, you may ask? Isn't this just shifting the distribution from one major corporation to another?

The difference is that Coke and Pepsi actually compete with each other. I'd bet that if you signed a promotional contract with Pepsi, they'd actually pay YOU as opposed to the other way around. I'd also wager that any contractural arrangements would not involve Pepsi owning the rights to your music.

The record business is already a corporate crime syndicate. Anything that diffuses its control to a more accountable, transparent distribution chain is infinitely desireable than the current state of the "industry."

We can produce our own music now. We have the tools. All we need is distribution.

I think we'll get a better deal for the distribution rights in the very near future from companies OUTSIDE the traditional industry than within it.

Also Coke and Pepsi do not let anyone else sell the product of their competitor if they can help it. I wonder if Coke has a clause in their contract that these labels cannot distribute those 250,000 songs on any future Pepsi music service.

lol so many overpriced services are going to crash and burn big time.

compmore dont diss coke like that pepsi does the exact same thing here at penn state coke isnt even allowed to be served at a student organized anything on campus.

How did that coke song go ? ....
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony....
and hear them...something... throughout the....dah dah

well its da real thing.

Who's gonna set up an online music download site next ?
McDonalds ? Pizza Hut ? KFC ? its still corporate cash
trying to make a quick buck, I hope they burn their asses, they
won't give a s***t about the artists there just using them for their
own greedy ends.
If the future of music is through crass coporate marketing then I think
that is just as bad if not worse then then current situation.

"they won't give a s***t about the artists there just using them for their own greedy ends."

And yet, it's still a better deal for the artists than current record label contracts.

A school I attended just recently had a contract with coca-cola products so no one could make contract deals with for any pepsi products on campus. Was pretty stupid, if someone like pepsi they drink it, if they like coca-cola they drink that. If they are told they can't drink pepsi they will just stock up on it end up drinking more pepsi.

Darkened you are absolutly right. I did mean that both do it. I used to own a little pizza parlor and served Pepsi products and part of my contract said I couldn't sell another competitors product.
Since it was a Coke website I was wondering outloud if they had it in their contract to do the same with the music

I wasn't tageting one or the other. personally I don't buy either. it's too darned expensive at the stores

Don't tell me. 99c per song and a chance to win a free can of cola

It's getting to the point of absurdity.
Coke, Micro$oft, Wal*Mart, ...
I guess Chevrolet and Ford might as well jump in feet first...

and how about a Jiffy-Pop Popcorn music download site...at 99 cents a pop of course....

ridiculous!

No the u.s. government will be selling the mp3 next
This is just getting better and better...
I bet in a few months the RIAA will offer a music service from their site
Oooh! wait, the republicans and democrats can endorse a music service.

And then PETA, GLAD, and other F'd up orginisations will offer music downloads....

This is ridiculous, and P2P still wins out on bothe the quality, price, and avalibility rankings, not to mention speed of download.

Jiffy-Pop Popcorn music download site...at 99 cents a pop of course

LOL

Just think. If the labels had listened to Janis Ian and created an industry-run virtual jukebox, this would have never happened.

All the music should be accessible from one place, a central database that knows where ALL of the songs are and can actually deliver them up.

But they missed their chance. Now the market is going to devour the crippled, aging beast.

I would like to see sites sponsored by trojan condoms, Doc Johnson adult toys, and Viagra. LOL

I would like to know what kind of music they would have...

hey gdZiemann,

Popcorn by hot butter, a one hit wonder from the 70s. Appropoe?

.. surfside probably Britney (the skank) Spears..

What worries me is that now that all these huge corporations are deciding to jump on the bandwagon, (so to speak), and start their own music download sites, they'll be paying royalties in huge lumps of cash to you know who. I can't abide anything that fills the coffers of the RIAA and the big 5.

Dag and I love Diet Coke since they too are affiliated with the RIAA I'm gonna quit drinking carbonated drinks! I'll boycott their butts too! We've been drinking more Iced Tea as it is I can do without it! Since now I also have a ever baring Lemon tree I guess we'll be drinking alot of Lemonade too

all these corporations are fucking stupid and i hate them all, yup very blunt and childish but whatever

Eh I feel like I'm being pick pocketed already every site I visit wants some money...

"I think we'll get a better deal for the distribution rights in the very near future from companies OUTSIDE the traditional industry than within it."

That could be. Kevin Martin already made a deal with Yoo-Hoo. This was in the LA Times on October 10th.

Kevin Martin is giving a whole new meaning to the notion of rock star beverage dependency.

Martin, former frontman for the rock group Candlebox, has a different band these days and a new partner to support his musical ventures: Yoo-Hoo Chocolate Drink.

Yoo-Hoo's maker, Cadbury Schweppes' Snapple Beverage Group, is sponsoring a five-song release by Kevin Martin and the HiWatts. That financial backing lets the band give songs away online through file-sharing networks and other piracy hotbeds.

By doing that, the band hopes to generate interest for its concert tours — where it makes the bulk of its money. The group also can expect to be rewarded by Yoo-Hoo if the company's drink sales climb.

What Martin and the band don't do is try to make their fortune the old-fashioned way: by selling a lot of CDs.

"It's the beginning of something that could totally change the music business," said Mitchell Reichgut of Jun Group Inc., which is distributing the free songs. "We're giving away the music. Please, take it! And the more people that take it, the better it is for the artist, the better it is for Yoo-Hoo. And the more Yoo-Hoo benefits, the more Kevin and the HiWatts will be rewarded."

The partnership allows them to build up their fan base without having to rely on expensive promotions or cater to the narrow tastes of corporate-radio playlists. Instead, file-sharing networks and the Internet serve as their radio station.

The band and Snapple Beverage Group refused to discuss financial specifics of their deal, but Martin's partner and band member Colin Duchin said "collectively, everyone is sharing in the expenses." The bottom line for Martin and his mates is that the support helps them be full-time musicians.

"It's about not having to have a day job, and making enough money to be able to go on the road and play music for the people," Martin said. "A day job would be really, really strange."

Duchin also noted that unlike some other would-be partners, Yoo-Hoo has not tried to influence or censor the band's guitar-driven rock.

For the beverage group, the arrangement offers a chance to curry favor among people who like to download music for free. The Yoo-Hoo campaign comes as the major record companies are trying to drive music fans away from file-sharing networks by suing hundreds of people for allegedly sharing songs without permission.

"For our audience — young adults — music is in the DNA," said Sheryl Adkins-Green, senior vice president of marketing for the beverage group.

The songs by Kevin Martin and the HiWatts are encoded in the MP3 format with no electronic locks, so they can be freely copied and burned to CDs. When the song files are downloaded and played on certain computers, they display a message crediting Yoo-Hoo for making the music available.

The setup, which started this week, relies on Jun Group's unusual ability to feed material into the highest levels of the file-sharing world: the private Internet sites where bootlegged music and movies are cached before spreading to chat services, news groups and, ultimately, the file-sharing networks used by hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

Fred Goldring, a prominent music-industry attorney, said such efforts can be terrific for artists good enough to get signed by a major label — but not prized enough to receive the full power of a label's star-making machinery. Bands in that category don't make any money off CD sales, he said, because all of their royalties get "recouped" by the labels to cover marketing, recording and touring costs.

"For the vast majority of artists," said Goldring, "this is the future."

Here is Kevin's web site with more info on the downloads:

http://www.kmband.com/

I was at a mall last week, and I bought a Pepsi at Sbarros. Guess what was attached to the lid? A 3" cd, with a few songs on it. Brittle Snears *gag* among others. It played okay in my computer (I had to try it didn't I?) but it says plainly it would only play on a "tray type" cd player. No biggie, I don't have any "slide in" cd players anyhow.
Point is... these companies are ALREADY IN the distribution biz! They've just come forward and "legitimized" it. They've been sponsoring bands and tours for years, so now they've got a website and are actually controlling how/where/when the music gets out.
I think this is a good thing. Pepsi and Coke fight for market share all the time, maybe this will be another way for them to get it. I have no preference either way Coke or Pepsi, but if I can get a discount on music (when/if I start buying again)just by popping a top, then hell.. I'd do it.
just my two cents
ttmmm

I've pulled out my crystal ball (actually, it's a snow globe I picked up at the dollar store), and here's what I see...

All these companies jumping on the music download bandwagon reminds me of a smaller version of "The Internet Bubble" seen in the late 90's. The market will eventually become so saturated with every corporate entity trying to drum up musical business, that they'll start to fail. The music consumers are only willing to part with so much money for DRM-infected music when they realize just how "convenient" and "portable" it really is. And as each one fails, the companies and the RIAA will blame file sharing on KaZaA, WinMX and others for the downfall.

It's so much easier to point the finger of blame instead of taking responsibility for one's past sins.

- PT!

My own crystal ball is a bit more sophisticated, but gives more or less the same predictions. It adds that because of competition from p2p services and the inconvenience of payment for credit-card-less teenagers, the online music business is never going to get very large anyway, so there wont be much bubble to burst.

As far as I can see, both Pepsi and Coke are only going into music distribution, not production. So the artists contracts remain unaltered. The main consequence is a lot more promosional deals linking music and soft drinks (supply the number written inside the labels on five bottles of coke and recieve five singles worth of credit on the coke music download service?).