14 DAY TRIAL // Good news from the record labels, in an effort to show that they do get the digital landscape, Interscope Records, part of the Universal Music Group, is giving away free TweetDeck copies, in partnership with Best Buy, with the purchase of select CDs. Finally, users get to enjoy the wonders of microblogging from the comfort of their own desktop or iPhone and all this without paying a dime. It almost sounds too good to be true and it almost is, except for the fact that TweetDeck is already free for everyone to download and use.
The custom TweetDeck client comes with purchases of CDs from artists like 50 Cent, Timbaland, Lady Gaga, Weezer and others which range in price from $10.99 to $13.99. Now, in all fairness, with the CD purchase, you get a customized version of the app which comes bundled with subscriptions to the Twitter streams of the 16 artists part of the promotion.
Of course, any user could also add the artists manually in a couple of minutes or make a list with them, if one isn't already available. So, all that it does is maybe save the buyers a few minutes. On the other hand, does anyone actually want to follow all the 16 artists, which are actually quite diverse when it comes to music genres although they all fall squarely in the mainstream category, to begin with?
At first glance, it does look like the labels may be waking up to the opportunities awarded by the web instead of blaming it for all their troubles, real or otherwise, but the execution does leave to be desired. Offering for free an app which is already free and making it sound like a huge deal probably isn't that convincing to many people and in the end may have the exact opposite effect to the desired one. Still, at the very least, it shows that, even though traffic may be stalling, Twitter is definitely in the mainstream and is there to stay.
