Apple offers iTunes shoppers "Complete My Album" service
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.
?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.
Comments
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
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.
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
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.
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
Today is Friday already?
"Apple on Friday began offering iTunes Store customers a new service..."
Today is Friday already?
Saw that too! Woohoo! Weekend starts tomorrow!
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.
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'?
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.
What if I've bought five or six singles?
Then you'd pay even less to complete the album.
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.
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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.
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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!!!".
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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?
As for me I just purchased 'American V' for €6, I'm very pleased with that.