MP3 Music Downloads - the new black in the 2008 record biz

Billboard say that Pepsi and Amazon have been planning for 12 months for a massive joint download promotion which is expected to be announced on February 3 during the Super Bowl, in Arizona.

Pepsi's first stab at giving away free music downloads, which was conducted in partnership with iTunes in 2004, was also promoted via a highly visible Super Bowl campaign. It resulted in 5 million people downloading free songs in the space of three months.(So long ago it was Before I-Pods and Before I- Tunes)

At the same time Walmart ( a family corner grocery store) has asked that major labels supply them with music in MP3 format.

This is putting pressure on Warner Music Group (WMG) and Sony BMG Music Entertainment to follow EMI and Universal Music Group's lead in distributing their music catalogues in MP3 format.

Disney’s Hollywood Records is another major testing MP3 at Amazon and Wal Mart . The company has supplied 30 to 40 titles from its back catalogue - latest albums Atreyu and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals on the Hollywood label available are currently in the MP3 format - they are not available at iTunes….yet

Water cooler talk in the industry says Amazon will pay labels in the area of 40 cents per track. This compares with the 65-70 cents labels currently receive from Amazon for digital track sales and the 70 cents they (are saidto ) get from Apple.

The Super Bowl commercials (even without the Bears there) will nonetheless double as the coming-out party for Amazon's digital download site, which soft-launched September 25. Since then, without aggressively promoting its download business, Amazon has captured about a 3 % market share – compared with 6% of the CD market.(Billboard figures)

Wal-Mart has (up to press) some 2 % market share in the digital download market but 22% of CD sales.

Massive changes are in the wind in the music distribution world.

UPDATE 6/12 Poop Murdoch's Times has finally discovered this story ... here