Music For Miles... And Drinks... And Fast Food
from the it's-everywhere dept
It appears that everyone is starting to realize that music, by itself, is really just a promotional item. Following yesterday's Macworld announcement about Pepsi giving away 100 million downloads, comes story upon story of companies "giving away" music at whichever music download store they've done a deal with. Of course, the companies are still paying the industry for all the downloads (at some discounted rate, I'm sure). The latest is that United Airlines and Sony will let people exchange their frequent flier miles for music. I'm not quite sure if this qualifies as the same as the other deals. Instead of giving away the music for free, they're asking you to pay with miles instead. I thought most people use their frequent flier miles for travel. And considering the ease with which people can get music from other sources, are they going to be willing to waste their frequent flier miles on a single music service that may not even be compatible with other music or music players they already have?
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miles
Actually, most people don't use their frequent flier miles at all--because they expire before the flier accumulates enough miles to get anything out of them. If this plan gives you something to do with miles that you know you'll never be able to trade in for tickets, then that's actually useful and a benefit to the consumer.
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