Southwest Airlines and iTunes are partnering up to promote Southwest’s new WiFi service (currently on 65 aircraft) by offering free music downloads.  InAirtainment will allow people to download this music while in the air.  A playlist of 20 free songs will be offered but there is a catch:  We’re not talking about top 40 songs here.  These songs will be from bands “about to fly” themselves.

Regardless of the value of the songs, this is a nice partnership and something a bit more unique than previous promotions for WiFi service.  The cachet of iTunes certainly helps promote the announcement. 

However, this also means that it has value only to those using iTunes and that potentially leaves a lot of people out of the promotion.  Nice approach but I think a partnership with someone like Amazon would have actually provided more value.  On the other hand, that kind of partnership would have also excluded iTunes users. 

It’s nice to see Southwest trying to be unique as usual but I have to give this promotion a B for its idea quality and a C- for its real value to the customer.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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