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It seems like nearly every day you hear someone say the words “iPod Killer” or “iTunes Killer” in reference to the newest portable digital music player or content deliver mechanism. As time goes by, those claims are swept out of the consumers minds and the next “big thing” gives it a go too. Recently however, one “iTunes Killer” has actually managed to stay at the forefront of consumers thoughts and wallets. Despite being web only, the Amazon MP3 store has received good reviews and with the combination of cheap songs has kept consumers happy.

In an effort to bring more consumers to Amazon MP3, Amazon is teaming with Pepsi to give away 1 Billion songs according to Billboard. The Motley Fool has the scoop here. If you remember a few years ago, Pepsi teamed with Apple to give away 100 million iTunes songs.

Personally, I’m really excited about this promotion for a few reasons.

1) I’m likely to get some free music since I have a moderate Mountain Dew habit.
2) Competition for iTunes and Apple IS a good thing. Just remember about a month ago when Apple dropped the price of iTunes Plus tracks to compete more directly with the DRM free tracks from Amazon.
3) The more people that buy digital music, the larger the market is for digital music players. Since the iPod controls the majority of the digital music player market, a larger market means more iPod sales.

What’s interesting in this whole promotion is that for the first time, consumers are being targeted with a large scale promotion of DRM free music. Could this be the beginning of the end for DRM? I sure hope so.

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