Last year was an exception, but the previous two years Pepsi has had superbowl ads where you could get free iTunes songs with a 1:3 chance of winning. There are certain sites that displayed the information on how to “cheat” the system and always end up with a winner.

Well Perez Hilton posted the (watch it soon as it will probably be pulled from YouTube soon) Justin Timberlake/Pepsi Superbowl (oops I mean The Big Game) ad. Watch it here (or below):

If you go to PepsiStuff.com it has a count down where the promotion starts tonight at midnight. Every “sip” gets you closer to music, sweepstakes, apparel, and more. I personally don’t care about the other stuff, I just want the free music. With the previous iTune/Pepsi offers I have gotten around 500 or so free songs.

Now here’s the catch, the promotion isn’t with iTunes this year, it is with Amazon and their DRM-Free music store. Hey I am all for DRM-Free music, I just don’t find it as easy to shop for music on Amazon, but if it free, I can’ certainly find the time.

So, stay tuned to PepsiStuff.com to find out all of the details, and start buying winners.

P.S. Pepsi can you please include these caps in the Pepsi One bottles? I just can’t stand Diet Pepsi.

As many of you know I had nearly everything I own stolen a few weeks ago. My job has allowed me to borrow an old PC (yeah I know a PC not a Mac) that was lying around and use at home until I am able to get one for myself. Up until now I was downloading tv shows via torrent and downloading them to my iPhone and watching that way, thus filling it up very quickly. Now with the computer I have tons of free space on my iPhone. I want to fill it up with some music, but I really don’t have any.

Here’s where you come in…since I am starting from scratch, send me your favorite song, band, album, etc. The easiest way would just be to send 1 mp3 to me of your favorite song via email to me(at)NickStarr(dot)com. It is a Google hosted email account so attachments can be up to 20 megs.

If you wanted to send a copy of an album or a cd or dvd of some of your favorite songs, you could also mail them via media mail (very cheap way of sending) to my PO Box in San Francisco: PO Box 426084, San Francisco, CA 94142.

You could also gift a song via iTunes, but I am trying to keep this as cost effective as possible.

Disclaimer: Sure here’s the part where I say you probably shouldn’t send music b/c of the RIAA blah blah blah, but just think of it as sending me a digital backup copy just in case you ever lose your music. I will be sure to send it back if that ever were to happen.

I want to thank everyone who sends a song. I really appreciate it and will make sure to listen to every one. I am sure it will open me up to a lot of different band/songs that I may of never discovered on my own.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I more often then not go out and buy the biggest most expensive Apple product the second it comes out. With my move to SF, I wasn’t able to buy an iPod Classic when they first came out, but now that I have a job (BTW I got a job!!!!) I can now spend that $100 Apple iPhone credit and buy a brand new iPod Classic. The question is do I go 80 gigs or 160?

A while back I lost ALL of my music and was able to re-download the iTunes purchases. I’ve built my music collection back up to around 45 gigs (including music, movies, podcasts, etc). Does it make sense for me to spend the extra $100 for a thicker iPod when I won’t even be filling up the 80 gig anytime soon?

Recently I haven’t been buying much music, and I have all of the cd’s from the bands I enjoy. So what is the point of expanding my music library beyond the confines of what my laptop HD can hold? (I’ve had some bad luck with external laptop HD’s recently as well)

So the question is, do I spend the $149 (plus $100 store credit) for the 80 gig or do I spend the $249 (plus $100 store credit) for the 160 gig iPod which I won’t be filling up anytime soon?

Your thoughts?

Creative slimmed down their main line of portable mp3 players.The 4.3″ Vision W goes from 26.4-mm to 22-mm. The Vision M with 2.5″ display goes from 22.1-mm to 19-mm.

I have always liked the Vision W as an option for a portable video player. It supports many video formats that the iPod and Zune don’t, as well as the larger display then Apple or Microsoft’s products.

They haven’t upgraded the storage capacity on these device, so the largest you can get is 60 gigs. I’m pretty sure that 60 gigs is enough for most people’s audio collection, but when you add video in, 60 gigs can fill up quickly.

Remeber the company that was giving away 1 year memberships to bloggers for blogging about their unlimited iTunes backup service? Well they turned out to have a bit more of a demand then they expected, and their pricing structure just wasn’t working out.

Well they have refunded the $69 paid by non-bloggers for the service, and changed the service to a Do-It-Yourself plan. They want you to get an Amazon S3 account, FTP account, or 2nd mac for backup.

I could of sworn that backing up to another mac was as easy as copying the directory over, but I guess their method is better then that and why not $18/year for the technology of drag and drop.

Webhosts like Mosso and Dreamhost have plenty enough space in most user accounts to upload your entire music library. I am not sure how well the host are going to like you doing this though. Check your TOS before you do the FTP option.

The Amazon S3 service has been something I’ve been interrested in for quite some time. Let me check out my iTunes library and see how much it would cost to host there monthly. (Keep in mind I lost all of my non-iTunes tracks a few months back).

I currently have 19 gigs of music. That means a monthly cost of $2.85, but the initial upload would be $3.80. To restore your entire music library it would be another $3.80 charge.

What if you had an 80 gig iPods worth of music to backup?  $12/month cost and initial $16 upload costs.

I think that I would use the FTP option, and bloggers do get a free 6 months of this new DIY service if you beta test.  The service won’t be available till April 2007.

Bandwagon is a new service for mac users that allows you to upload your iTunes library and host it there as a backup (BTW when is Leopard and Time Machine coming out anyway?).

They are giving away a free year of hosting to any blogger who posts their logo and links to them. So hereI go:

I’m not sure how safe I feel using the new service as that they haven’t even determined a price scheme yet. They are talking about $69/year to $99/year, or just selling it as a monthly $1/month service which uploads to our own Amazon S3 account. They are even talking about using website hosting companies to host the media.

Sounds like they don’t have all of their ducks in a row currently. Being that they don’t have any ads up on the site for a quick gag to earn some extra ad money, I am guessing this will be a legit service. I just want to know that my music is stored safely online, not in some shared hosting server.

The rumors were true. The two companies have merged today. They are hoping to take on the iPod and other emerging radio devices (ie. HD Radio). The XM shareholders will receive 4.6 shares of Sirius stock for every share they own, valuing them at $17.02 each based on Friday’s closing price for Sirius shares.

Neither company has turned a profit yet, but together who knows what will happen. Right now XM receivers can’t receive Sirius and vice versa, but look for devices in the near future that can get both companies signal.