Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Jobs told McDonald's off
Apple needed a big partner to distribute iTunes. For the iPod, Apple had leaned on HP to put it into Best Buy, Circuit City, and other retailers, since Apple had no sales team or stores of its own. Jimmy, the Interscope boss, went after a Coca-Cola deal first, and an executive there turned it down twice.
Steve Stoute, then a young executive representing McDonald's, had an idea of his own: the music meal, a Big Mac and large fries, or a hamburger and fries, plus a song. McDonald's turned Apple down as well. The meeting was at Apple, and the McDonald's executive was posturing.
Jobs went nuclear. The meeting hadn't gone bad yet, but it was heading somewhere it wouldn't end well, and he saw it coming and said the line about food that kills kids. The McDonald's people looked at Stoute as if he had walked them into a trap, and he told them Jobs was only playing.
Why did iTunes songs cost 99 cents?
When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003, it sold each song for 99 cents and offered a catalog of about 200,000 songs from the five major labels. Per-song pricing unbundled the album, which had been the unit the CD business was built on. Apple reported that the store sold a million songs in its first week.
How did Pepsi end up promoting iTunes?
In early 2004, Pepsi and Apple announced a promotion that put codes under bottle caps, each redeemable for a free iTunes song. It was tied to Super Bowl advertising. The companies said 100 million songs were available to give away.
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