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By Richard Menta- 9/30/99 Note: Since this story was written, EMusic has continued this promotion replacing the new Creative Nomad II (a unit with an FM radio and USB port) for the Rave MP. The link below goes to the new promotion page --Editor 5/28/00. So tell me, when does it make sense to offer free to consumers a $230 MP3 portable player for buying just $50.00 worth of music from your site? Simple, when the prize itself can generate more music sales. Yesterday, EMusic announced the "Ultimate MP3 Starter Kit", a generous promotion with Sensory Science, maker of the RaveMP portable MP3 player, that both companies hope will capture the brand loyalty of online music shoppers. |
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Brand loyalty is the holy grail for sites like EMusic, who hope to train a new generation of audiophiles to purchase their music via online download. It's not an easy task. Even though EMusic charges a reasonable $0.99 per track, the web is filled with sites offering popular tunes not only free, but legal. Online retailers like CDNow, For example, find MP3 singles to be a great tool for promoting CD sales and have added free MP3 promotional tracks to their sales model.
EMusic needs to get more MP3 users at ease with the concept of paying for their music downloads and, ideally, become long term customers. The company has decided to address this aggresively by offering a very sweet pot. Open an account and purchase $50.00 worth of music from their site, and EMusic will send you for free:
1. A Rave MP Media Player which presently sells for $229.00 on sites like Amazon.
2. RealJukebox Plus digital music software from RealNetworks which retails for
$30.00
EMusic expects that as customers satisfy the $50.00 requirement, they will become comfortable with purchasing MP3 files online. What makes the expensive MP3 player ideal for the promotion is that not only is it a compelling draw, but once in the hands of customers, it should stimulate further music purchases as users search out tunes to play on them.
The benefit is not EMusic's alone. Right now, as one of the few companies with an MP3 player on the market, Sensory Science is a big fish in a small, and lucrative, pond. So lucrative that major competiton is around the corner.
Within a year, every major electronics manufacturer from Aiwa to Zenith is expected to have a unit lining department store shelves. Without strong name recognition in the MP3 arena, a small company like Sensory Science can easily be smothered in a sea of familiar brand names. That's why such an aggressive marketing promotion will work well for them. The more units they can put in peoples hands - a group that right now contains young, rabid MP3 users who are a clean slate as far as brand loyalty goes and thus a perfect target - the more customers they will retain for future generations of its products.
When market forces work like this, the big winner is the consumer. Unlike cell phones and PC's, the customer here is not required to commit to a multi-year contract to subsidize their free product. Considering most CD's sell in the stores for $12.00 to $16.00, a $50.00 purchase commitment is quite modest, certainly a money loser in the short run. But the long run is what these vendors are building towards. So grab this bargain while you can. It's too generous to last very long.
Copyright 1999 MP3 Newswire. All rights reserved.
