Pepsi and iTunes

Ok, so here's the deal. Buy Pepsi products, and there are lots, cleverly disguised, deceitful little buggers, almost never sharing shelf space with the hated and depised Coca Cola jerkfaces, and then (maybe) get a free song download from Apple's iTunes.

Sounds great. The songs usually cost an obscene 99 cents. So do the Pepsi products. So... whatever.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The bottles with the giveaways have yellow caps. You can peek under the cap before you purchase the sweet nectar of life, and make sure that it says "FREE SONG" or "20oz blah blah blah.
You'll still have to pay tax (7 entire pennies here in Prefect Entertainment Land) but you can get a free Pepsi, use that to get a free Pepsi (ad infinitum, or until the manager kicks your miserly little tushie out of the store for being a jackass) and then use the last Pepsi to get a free song.

That's what I did. I got a free drink, and made sure that drink had a free song. That way, the song was REALLY free.

Ok, now you've got the bottle cap with the free song, what are you gonna do? I'll tell you what, you greedy little fart, go download iTunes, (I'm not gonna link to it, because they haven't paid me) and install it. Yeah, I know, I dislike Apple now too, and think that they've lost their minds, but big whoop, we are gonna mess with them a little later.

Right, got that thingie downloaded and installed? Good. Ok, DON'T enter in any credit card stuff, unless you are planning to purchase stuff later. I only plan to get free stuff from them (so far,) so I didn't enter any payment info.

They didn't make it very obvious how you are supposed to enter in your 10 digit code to redeem yer coupon, but I just searched google for the right place, cause I'm lazy and/or stupid. (Hint, try Apples official webpage)

Next, download the song of your choice. None of that hippie crap, either. Get something good.

Ok, now you have a cool song that you can listen to on your computer, or if you are a souless lemming, maybe you can use an iPod. Only one snag. You new song is a .M4p file or something equally stupid. Why, I hear you ask? Because Apple is off their space age plastic rockers.

Yes.

iTunes likes to use .m4p or .m4b or some such nonsense, and they like to encrypt the living daylights out of it, and prevent you from listening to it on anything that isn't Apple approved.

Do you know what that means? I thought so. It means it's time to stick it to Apple, and do some white-hat hacking.

Basically, you're gonna use something called hymn, or one of it's off-shoots, JHymn, or iOpener.
Yes, all of those links go to the same place, just use JHymn or iOpener, for now, unless you enjoy making things harder for yourself, to decrypt the song from iTunes, and then if you want to enjoy listening to that sweet, sweet, New Kidz on the Block song on your computer at work, then you can use dbPowerAmp, or WinAmp, or whatever the heck you want to use to convert that sucker into a crummy mp3 file.

There. If you can do that, let me know, ok? I'm having trouble decrypting MY song, but I haven't given up yet.

If your teeth fall out from drinking all of that Pepsi, then I'll laugh maniacally at your toothless face, and call you names. You should share it instead with your friends if you have any, or maybe your family. If you are really enterprising, sell all of those topless Pepsi products to those suckers you pawn all of your crap off on. Too bad Jones Soda didn't get in on this, then you could drink them all.

EDIT:Just in case you think that was all somehow immoral, (and I almost did) it turns out that Pepsi doesn't care about you peeking under the cap like a freaking 9 year old just to get a 'free' song. I mean, you've heard about "getting something for a song"? Songs aren't worth a whole lot, and most people are too lazy and/or inept to redeem the caps anyway. If you get a million free drinks, that might not exactly make Pepsi your best friend, but a whole dollar should get more than one measly drink, don't you think? Look down the aisle where the 2 LITER bottles are, and check those prices.

Apple doesn't care about it either. They won't jump for joy when you decrypt the thingie, but they got their filthy mammon and increased traffic, and another iTunes user to boot, so it works out.

EDIT #2: Yes, iTunes .m4p is a better/clearer/ format than mp3, using ACC and whatnot. Yes, it's preferable, but not everything plays ACC. Keep a backup m4b stripped of it's encryption so you can play it when you purchase better equipment.