If this rumor isn’t happening, perhaps Apple should look into it. If it is happening, you heard it here first!
Our anonymous single source from within the music licensing industry tells us that Sting and Dire Straits are on board with Apple Inc. to feature a new TV, Web, and radio campaign for Apple TV that will feature Sting singing an updated lyric from Dire Strait’s classic “Money for Nothing” that replaces “I want my… I want my… I want my MTV” with “I want my… I want my… I want my Apple TV.”
The deal is for the audio only; neither Sting nor Dire Straits will be appearing in campaign visuals.
MacDailyNews Note: The “Money for Nothing” music video was the first computer generated music video shown on MTV (created on a Bosch FGS-4000 CGI system, according to Wikipedia) and the first video shown on MTV Europe when the network launched on August 1, 1987.
Campaign start dates and visual content for the TV and Web ads are unknown. There may be more than meets the eye to this deal as our source did state, “I’ll leave you with two words: ‘Police iPod.'”
According to our source, Sting has already recorded the new lyric and Apple has licensed the worldwide rights from Dire Straits’ Universal Music Group’s Mercury Records’ Vertigo Records division. The song was co-written by Dire Straits’ leader Mark Knopfler and Sting.
If true, that certainly is an infectious, repetitive lyric which would seem well-suited to driving the words “Apple TV” into mass awareness.