I am now 1 for 3 with Pepsi bottles purchased at Sav-On, which I guess makes sense. What I didn't realize until I actually read the fine print is that this year, there's also a 1 in 6 chance to get a "buy one, get one free" bottlecap. I know that makes the songs cheaper, but I've lost all of my math skills from high school, so I can't figure out exactly how much cheaper.

Song number 1: "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, which not only had I forgotten existed, but I don't think I ever knew the title and artist. It was a number 3 hit in 1975. It's a good thing I have the Joel Whitburn "Top Pop Singles" and "Top Pop Albums" books so I can easily correct the iTunes Music Store's tagging, which lists the song as 2002 based on the release date of the compilation album on which it appears.

Also this year, each song redeemed counts as an entry to win an iPod Mini. They claim they're giving away one per hour; if that's literally true, perhaps I should wait to redeem my songs until late at night (say, after midnight Pacific time) so I theoretically have a better chance. Not that I have a use for an iPod Mini, considering my music collection is too large for even my 30-gigabyte iPod Regular. I'd probably just sell it on eBay or something.

Original comments...

Levi: Well, my off-the-top-of-my-head math says you'll end up saving abuot 16% per song. Here's how I figured it:

Say a Pepsi is $1. You buy six of them, you've spent $6. But you get one cap that entitles you to a free soday for the next one you buy. So next time you want 6 sodas, you only pay for 5, which costs you $5. But you get another bottle cap, to redeem which, you're going to have to buy another soda. One-third of the time, from that final transaction, with which you're attempting to settle accounts with Pepsico, you'll get another bottle cap. But from the figures I've already gotten, I calculate that you end up with 14 sodas, with each soda costing you about $.86. Over time, the initial $6 investment (for the first batch of sodas) is amortized and you settle into a real price of just above $.84. There's always the lingering problem of how the remaining cap affects the total cost. It's simple if the two sodas you buy with that cap for $1 aren't winners: your price per soda drops to just below $.84. But if, as will happen 1/3 of the time, that one's a winner, your next pair of sodas (which, probabilistically speaking, will be non-winners, since you've already had your winner in this batch of six) will bring your cost per soda down to $.83.

I know a real math person could figure this much more cleanly, and they probably could take proper account of the lingering cap effect. But this is my best effort for now.

Aquarius: You save 100% per song. If you buy a Pepsi with no promotion, you get a Pepsi. If you buy a Pepsi with the promotion, you get a Pepsi and maybe a song. If you do a get a song, it's a 100% savings versus buying it on iTunes.