In an ingenious nod to the forces of capitalism, Sprint will soon embed its logo onto a song so that illegal downloaders will see its logo when the song plays. It’s an ingenious way to beat filesharing–the music industry’s bugaboo.
The NY Post reported today that on Atlantic Records tracks, Sprint will buy an ad on 16 million song files by the artist Plies, so on the desktop or ipod the listener will see the Sprint logo.
Despite all of the warnings and the rise of iTunes, illegal downloads are still the source of most music for the under 35 set. And by signing up to place their ads Sprint is leveraging itself as an innovator, and it also helps promote their new service Pandora.com, an online radio station.
It is always interesting to see the actions of the bold that sometimes start sea changes. By spending six figures on this ad deal, Sprint may just be opening up a whole new way of looking at downloads.
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