POP WITH YOUR POP

Every so often, someone floats the idea of an internet-connected fridge; swearing that within a year your kitchen will be plugged in to the world wide web. It never happens, of course, because it's a shit idea. Just because you can put a piece of technology into a bit of equipment, doesn't mean you should.

Which you should bear in mind as you learn that Coca-Cola is going to try drinks vending machines which offer music downloads. The idea being, of course, that while you buy a bottle of soda, you can also select a song to be sent to your wireless device (i.e. your mobile phone).

We've yet to have it convincingly explained to us why you might want to hoof it off down to the nearest drinks machine to get a song onto your phone when you could, you know, dial up a download service from your handset without the need to march across town, but we expect they've got a reason.

After all, the company that tried to flog us tap water in bottles isn't going to pour billions away on a hare-brained scheme, is it?

We were going to end with a waspish comment about MyCokeMusic here, but what struck us was that the Digital Music News weblog post ended with this:

While selling digital music may seem like a stretch for a soft drink company, Coca-Cola has a long history in retail vending and has the money to back up a move like this. That’s as real as it gets. If Wal-Mart can do it, why not Coca-Cola? So drink up, and listen up.

If even an excellent web-savvy journalist like Michael Bloom has totally forgotten Coke runs a music download service already, it doesn't really suggest that the drinks company is being especially successful at promoting itself, does it?

music downloads coca-cola