Apple offers iTunes shoppers "Complete My Album" service

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
Apple on Friday began offering iTunes Store customers a new service called Complete My Album that allows them to turn their individual tracks into a complete album at a reduced price by giving them a full 99 cent credit for every track they have previously purchased from that album.



?Music fans can now round out their music collections by upgrading their singles into complete albums with just one click, and get full credit for those songs they have previously purchased from iTunes,? said Eddy Cue, Apple?s vice president of iTunes. ?Complete My Album is a wonderful new way that iTunes helps customers grow and enjoy their music collections.?



Complete My Album offers customers up to 180 days after first purchasing individual songs from any qualifying album to purchase the rest of that album at a reduced price. When users buy any song on iTunes the corresponding album will immediately appear on their personalized Complete My Album page with the reduced price listed.



For example, Apple said a user who?s already purchased three 99 cent singles and decides to buy the corresponding $9.99 album would be able to download the remaining songs to complete the album for just $7.02, without having to buy the singles again.



?iTunes continues to revolutionize the digital music industry by offering music fans innovative ways to explore and enjoy new music,? said Thomas Hesse, president, Global Digital Business and US Sales, Sony BMG Music Entertainment. ?With Complete My Album, iTunes is giving music fans the best of both worlds?the ability to discover great new music by buying just the single and a credit toward the purchase of the complete album.?



Apple's iTunes Store features the world?s largest digital media catalog with over four million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The store has sold over two billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies, making it the world?s most popular online music, TV and movie store.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 30
    slewisslewis Posts: 2,081member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Apple on Friday began offering iTunes Store customers a new service called Complete My Album that allows them to turn their individual tracks into a complete album at a reduced price by giving them a full 99 cent credit for every track they have previously purchased from that album.



    ?Music fans can now round out their music collections by upgrading their singles into complete albums with just one click, and get full credit for those songs they have previously purchased from iTunes,? said Eddy Cue, Apple?s vice president of iTunes. ?Complete My Album is a wonderful new way that iTunes helps customers grow and enjoy their music collections.?



    Complete My Album offers customers up to 180 days after first purchasing individual songs from any qualifying album to purchase the rest of that album at a reduced price. When users buy any song on iTunes the corresponding album will immediately appear on their personalized Complete My Album page with the reduced price listed.



    For example, Apple said a user who?s already purchased three 99 cent singles and decides to buy the corresponding $9.99 album would be able to download the remaining songs to complete the album for just $7.02, without having to buy the singles again.



    ?iTunes continues to revolutionize the digital music industry by offering music fans innovative ways to explore and enjoy new music,? said Thomas Hesse, president, Global Digital Business and US Sales, Sony BMG Music Entertainment. ?With Complete My Album, iTunes is giving music fans the best of both worlds?the ability to discover great new music by buying just the single and a credit toward the purchase of the complete album.?



    Apple's iTunes Store features the world?s largest digital media catalog with over four million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The store has sold over two billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies, making it the world?s most popular online music, TV and movie store.



    I was just about to leap for joy until I saw that....



    Sebastian
  • Reply 2 of 30
    What if I've bought five or six singles? This is a good start, but it isn't quite there yet.
  • Reply 3 of 30
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Slewis View Post


    I was just about to leap for joy until I saw that....



    Sebastian



    Don't you think it's impressive that they were able to do this at all? In my 30 years of listening to music this is the first I've ever heard of or seen such an offering through any (legitimate) channel of distribution.



    The restrictions may have to do with price breaks either on the wholesale side (record distributors) or the retail channel (Apple)... Someone eats the cost of discounting the tracks out of their own profit margin. Apple's margin on iTunes is low and the record companies have also had to make concessions on their margins to get premium splashes, static ads or feature pages in the iTunes Music Store. The same things are true of any business... You can go down to Nordstrom's and find many shoes marked down but you will almost NEVER find a pair of Ferragamo dress shoes on clearance.



    Even if the reason they don't give you a break on every album is just to preserve earnings, Apple keeps coming out with appealing products with great industrial design because they have substantial earnings that can be reinvested into continuously evolving the product line.
  • Reply 4 of 30
    slewisslewis Posts: 2,081member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Snowdog74 View Post


    Don't you think it's impressive that they were able to do this at all? In my 30 years of listening to music this is the first I've ever heard of or seen such an offering through any (legitimate) channel of distribution.



    The restrictions may have to do with price breaks either on the wholesale side (record distributors) or the retail channel (Apple)... Someone eats the cost of discounting the tracks out of their own profit margin. Apple's margin on iTunes is low and the record companies have also had to make concessions on their margins to get premium splashes, static ads or feature pages in the iTunes Music Store. The same things are true of any business... You can go down to Nordstrom's and find many shoes marked down but you will almost NEVER find a pair of Ferragamo dress shoes on clearance.



    Even if the reason they don't give you a break on every album is just to preserve earnings, Apple keeps coming out with appealing products with great industrial design because they have substantial earnings that can be reinvested into continuously evolving the product line.



    I think it's impressive, and the 180 days is actually pretty good, much better then say... 30 days. It's the qualifying albums that gets me because out of my entire library, maybe only half the songs that I don't have the complete album for isn't "qualified" for it.



    Sebastian

    EDIT: I've been checking my songs... forget I said anything actually. I just finished checking all of them and it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Actually it seems unqualified albums are singles (of course) and that's about it. I just wish there was more details to begin with.



    The Funny thing is I won't be saving anything. I noticed while checking, a lot of the albums rose in price.



    Sebastian
  • Reply 5 of 30
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    Seems that only some music labels have agreed to support this feature (obviously Sony are one of them), hence it is only supported on qualifying albums. Slewis points out that the cost of having this feature is an increased album price. It's good for those people who have 3 singles from an album though, and it gets rid of one argument against online music sales about buying the same track multiple times when you get both the singles and the albums. This gives iTunes another advantage over physical distribution. Now all they need to do is sell lossless music...
  • Reply 6 of 30
    porchlandporchland Posts: 478member
    I had suggested this in iTunes' feedback page, so this is great news. I hope Apple will be pretty inclusive of albums and put out preview tracks as numbered album tracks rather than as singles that don't generate an album credit.



    I don't know how the margins work, but this will probably cause me to spend more money on iTunes than I do now -- both by (1) taking more chances on songs I'm thinking about getting the full album and wind up doing neither and by (2) completing albums.



    EDIT:



    iTunes is showing me 378 albums, so selection looks good. You can rank by expiration date -- also good.



    The only negative: This is the sort of thing you would expect to see announced at a music event, so maybe this means we're not getting an event for a while. (I'll still impatiently waiting for The Beatles.)



    EDIT 2:



    Also nice: When you pull up an album page in the store, it grays out the tracks you already have and shows you the Complete My Album price. ... Hmm, it looks like this only works if you go to the album page from the Complete My Album page.
  • Reply 7 of 30
    parkyparky Posts: 383member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight View Post


    What if I've bought five or six singles? This is a good start, but it isn't quite there yet.



    Then you get the cost of the 5 or 6 singles knocked of the price of the album.



    Ian
  • Reply 8 of 30
    "Apple on Friday began offering iTunes Store customers a new service..."



    Today is Friday already?
  • Reply 9 of 30
    louzerlouzer Posts: 1,054member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Matthew Yohe View Post


    "Apple on Friday began offering iTunes Store customers a new service..."



    Today is Friday already?



    Saw that too! Woohoo! Weekend starts tomorrow!
  • Reply 10 of 30
    I just did the "complete my Album" with Me'shell Ndegeocello, I had all but five of the songs, and I was able to get the rest for 4.95.
  • Reply 11 of 30
    louzerlouzer Posts: 1,054member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Slewis View Post


    I think it's impressive, and the 180 days is actually pretty good, much better then say... 30 days. It's the qualifying albums that gets me because out of my entire library, maybe only half the songs that I don't have the complete album for isn't "qualified" for it.



    I note that I have a lot of albums available that I bought singles for a LONG time ago. Of course, most of the songs I purchased came from albums that I didn't want to purchase, so its not much of a great thing.



    Oh, and in case you were wondering, free song downloads don't qualify.
  • Reply 12 of 30
    eckingecking Posts: 1,588member
    This is pretty smart. It finally now offers a way to purchase music in a way that cds can't.
  • Reply 13 of 30
    -cj--cj- Posts: 58member
    This is great since I'm usually faced with a dilemma when an artist pre-releases a song from the album. I didn't always want to buy the song if I knew I'd likely get the whole album later. Conversely, if I had already bought one of the songs, I was a lot less likely to buy the album. This seems like a really fair deal for consumers.
  • Reply 14 of 30
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight View Post


    I just did the "complete my Album" with Me'shell Ndegeocello, I had all but five of the songs, and I was able to get the rest for 4.95.



    And how much would those same five songs have cost you if you bought them without this 'deal'?
  • Reply 15 of 30
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Slewis View Post


    I was just about to leap for joy until I saw that....



    Sebastian



    All "qualifying album" means is you must have bought at least one song from that album, that is all.
  • Reply 16 of 30
    tbagginstbaggins Posts: 2,306member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight View Post


    What if I've bought five or six singles?



    Then you'd pay even less to complete the album.



    Quote:

    This is a good start, but it isn't quite there yet.



    How do you figure? The only thing I see to fret about is the fact that there's a time limit on it... you have to complete the album within a few months to a year of buying the single(s) or the option goes away. Other than that, it's a money saver in a lot of cases.



    .
  • Reply 17 of 30
    tbagginstbaggins Posts: 2,306member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hattig View Post


    Now all they need to do is sell lossless music...



    Or even 320 kbps AAC. It's pretty tough to hear the difference between that and lossless... most ppl can't.



    Of course, if you're gonna bother to do 320 kbps, you might as well go the xtra step and just offer lossless... I suppose you could charge more for it too.



    .
  • Reply 18 of 30
    tbagginstbaggins Posts: 2,306member
    This is great, overall, but what do you bet that some in the music industry (i.e. labels who chose not to make their music available for this) are going to whine and cry about how everyone is going to lose their shirt over stuff like this and waaah waaah waaaah whine bitch moan cry.



    If anything, this is a revenue-enhancer. A lot of people on the fence about buying the rest of the album will now buy. But again, it'll be another case of Apple doing something smart while (some) record companies bray (in dinosaur-ese, of course), "Goddammit Apple, you're making us go BROKE!!!".



    .
  • Reply 19 of 30
    porchlandporchland Posts: 478member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BlackSummerNight View Post


    What if I've bought five or six singles? This is a good start, but it isn't quite there yet.



    What were you hoping for, exactly?
  • Reply 20 of 30
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    There has to be a time limit obviously because songs can't stay 99c forever, everything goes up over time. They wont be 99c in 12 years time for example. 6 months is plenty of time to figure out whether you want the full album of not. If one can't decide within 6 months they probably have other more important issues that need sorting. Try going back to the shop you bought that single in in five months time to ask them for a few dollars off the album price and see what response you get?



    As for me I just purchased 'American V' for €6, I'm very pleased with that.
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