That's Good to Hear

The vaudeville of Super Bowl TV advertisements typically produces little more than a big payday for the hosting network.

Therefore, it's nice to see an advertiser running against the grain, and actually using this gaudy pulpit to a positive social end. This Sunday, Pepsi will announce that 1 in 3 sodas will have a code redeemable for a song at Apple's iTunes store. It looks like Pepsi's on the hook for up to 100 million tunes.

A promotion designed to push more sugar water? Sure.

...but know this: This kind of endorsement is exactly the kickstart that the fledgling legal media download industry needs to surge ahead of its recording industry-controlled real world counterpart.

Now, all we need is for musicians (and filmmakers?) to join Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel's Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists, to effectively remove the current set of record companies from the equation.