Apple to credit song purchases towards full album sales?
By Paul Miller 
posted March 28th 2007 7:25PM
posted March 28th 2007 7:25PM
Also known as "the feature that should've been there from the start," it sounds like Apple is finally working out deals with labels to allow for the purchase of singles on iTunes to act as credit towards the purchase of the full album from whence they came, at least within a limited time frame. Such a deal has been rumored before, but this time the word is from the New York Times, citing "people involved in the negotiations," which sounds decidedly less sketch. Obviously, there's still much to learn, since we don't know what kind of time period Apple has in mind, and we don't know how many labels it has on board, but we can think of many a [Via Ars Technica]
nice work.. and ABOUT TIME... a few other services are already doing it.
Here's my question, if I made such purchase before, will I get credits back?
personally, I'd rather see a discount given to the amount of songs I buy. The idea of an album should be dead in the digital age. I say, award people for buying a lot of music at one time. Of course, I'll never buy DRM-infected files so whatever they do really won't affect me. (I'll stick to purchasing my music at used CD stores if I ever need to get any new music.)
an album isn't just a marketing tool though, a lot of artists make an album of songs that are meant to be heard as an album.
I agree! The album should be dead! Now I'm going to head over to the used CD store to buy a new....album? Oh wait...
some "artists" do produce albums that are worthy, but most singers/vocalists should only produce one song at a time.
Until they sell, non DRM songs, buying album CDs is unfortunately the best way to get music. I usually wait until songs are old enough to be placed on a "Best of" album, before purchasing a CD. If I want a song that is couple with terrible album songs, then I'm out of luck. But usually I don't buy new music, so I'm never in the position.
What they need to do now is let me re-download video content that I had downloaded before they doubled the resolution. No fair that I have to pay twice!
They should give you a discount for buying the whole album. 99 cents per song, but a 12 song album should be $10 or something like that.
The labels make buying full albums not economical and then bitch that people are only buying singles.
Actually I think all of it is too expensive. I'm not going to pay $12 for 12 DRMed songs that effectively cost them nothing to deliver to me when I can buy a packaged physical CD with no DRM for $14. For music will all those restrictions and less cost of goods, it should be way less expensive.
"They should give you a discount for buying the whole album. 99 cents per song, but a 12 song album should be $10 or something like that."
Peter,
Have you ever looked at the Itunes music store?
Steve, Yes I have. There are examples where the whole album is $10 (especially new releases), but there is plenty of stuff that is priced at 99 cents x number of tracks.
Especially for the older stuff, it's absurd. Why am I still paying $14 for a 10 year old album that isn't popular?
Cool....... this definitely sounds like a no-brainer from the label's perspective. I can personally think of at least a few times where I sort of decided against buying a full album because I had already bought one or two tracks, and couldn't justify the idea of paying for them again. Doing this would definitely make me more likely to buy full albums from bands after purchasing and liking a few of their songs.
If I am going to buy a whole album, I'd go to store and get an UN-DRMed CD. you pay a few bucks more, but you get a CD and case.
"The idea of an album should be dead in the digital age" and "The album should be dead." Why's that? I agree with Andrew Harrison - it's an artform subject to good and bad examples. Sometimes an album's crap, sometimes it's wonderful, but iTunes' pricing model hasn't helped the format. If iTMS does make this change, it'll be good news.
This feature is at the iTunes stores right now. It's called "Complete My Album".
As I read this article I was listening to "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" by Modest Mouse. ITunes sold me the single "Dashboard" 2 months ago and credited me the .99 for the whole album when it came out a few weeks ago. So I guess they've already started doing this. Perhaps this contributed to its #1 Billboard Status??
A cool, if overdue, idea.
Incidentally, it should be 'whence', not 'from whence'.