Okay, folks, there's another newcomer looking to challenge the market dominance of the iTunes Music Store, so let's get a show of hands. Which seems weirder to you, conceptually speaking: Coca-Cola's music download store, or Tesco's equivalent venture?

Wow. Barely any response, and what few hands we do see are all clustered on an island slightly smaller than Oregon over there on the other side of the Atlantic. Okay, well, for the rest of you with the blank stares, we should explain: first of all, Coke does indeed have its own music download store called MyCokeMusic.com, but it's only active in the United Kingdom. (You would have picked up on that if you'd paid more attention around here.) As for Tesco, it's a gi-normous supermarket chain over there in the UK who has evidently felt dead inside ever since it failed in its three-year bid to change the name of a traditional English dessert from "Spotted Dick" to "Spotted Richard," so it's decided to jump on the music download bandwagon in hopes of bolstering morale.

So now that we're all on the same page, let's try this again. Which strikes you as more bizarre: MyCokeMusic.com, or the newly-launched iTesco Music Store? We're pretty torn, ourselves. While, in a strictly categorical business sense, fizzy beverages seem totally unrelated to electronic music distribution, Coke peddles its various fluids by aggressively marketing them to the cool kids; MyCokeMusic.com is obviously just another way to keep its brand visible to those hip 'n' wacky teens with their disposable income and resistance to insulin shock. We're guessing that choice of beverage has a lot more to do with brand loyalty than taste, so realistically speaking, anything Coke can do to promote its brand among its target demographics is a solid business move, even if it seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with brown sugary stuff in bottles. (Who remembers Coke clothing? Ah, the eighties...)

Now, being on the wrong side of the ocean to collect much relevant data, we're just going to have to assume that, like pretty much every other supermarket on the planet, Tesco isn't really making a major push to become the place where all the hip teens do all their grocery shopping. Looking at it that way, Coke's foray into music downloads might make more sense. But leaving aside marketing and demographics for a moment, at least supermarkets sell lots of different items, and it's not even limited to food; granted, there's a bit of a leap from batteries and greeting cards to digital music downloads, but Tesco's never been afraid to stretch the whole "supermarket" thing a bit. Longtime viewers might recall that we once informed you that Tesco sold iMacs. Heck, it even sells insurance, for crying out loud; if you're going to go that far afield, why not serve up some Missy Elliott tunes at the same time?

Of course, from an Apple perspective this is all largely moot, since we can't see Tesco stealing customers from the iTMS in the UK any more than Wal-Mart steals iTMS customers over here-- less, even, since Wal-Mart at least beats Apple on price, while Tesco only price-matches Apple. If anything, it's other UK iTMS competitors like MyCokeMusic and Napster who'll lose revenue to Tesco, since they charge more per song than Tesco's 79 pence. And then there's the real reason Apple needn't worry just yet: Tesco's store is-- surprise, surprise-- Windows Media-based, meaning that it won't work on Macs and (more to the point) it won't work with iPods. Considering that the UK is clearly one of the absolutely iPod-craziest spots on earth, well, anyone want to bet just how much Apple's UK market share wavers? Tesco may well discover that it would have been far better off trying to rename another dessert.