iTunes’ New Selling Concept Could Put Album Sales Back On “Tracks”
Posted March 30, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s been the leader in online music sales and its iPod has become the de facto generic name for MP3 players.
So it seems only logical that computer innovator Apple would come up with a new wrinkle to change the way the business of music downloading is done online.
The company has introduced a new scheme that allows its iTunes customers who have bought single tracks by an artist for 99 cents to purchase the entire album at a discount.
The idea is called “Complete My Album” and it’s designed to spur sales without making you pay more.
How does it work? Apple will take 99 cents off the price of any album for every track you’ve already purchased from a specific CD. So if you’ve bought three previous single songs, what would normally be a $9.99 album will cost you only $7.02.
It ends the bizarre practice of forcing consumers to repay for part of an artist’s work that they already own.
The company hopes it will also end any resistance to picking up the rest of those tunes.
“Once we bought a song, we wondered why we had to buy it again if we wanted the album,” explains Apple’s Eddy Cue. “We hope it helps us sell more songs ultimately, and from the customer point of view, we think it’s the right thing to do.”
There are some exceptions to the rule. You have to make that album purchase within 180 days after you bought the original tracks.
And any of the millions of customers who downloaded songs off the service over the past four years will be given just 90 ‘retroactive’ days to take advantage of the offer.
The industry has often complained that the iTunes policy of selling single songs is wrecking their business by discouraging album sales.
And artists gripe that allowing the puchase of indivdual tracks ruins the integrity of their work.
But someone must like iTunes’ policies. It’s the biggest online music vendor in the world, capturing some 70 percent of the market. Since the store first debuted in 2003, it’s sold more than 2.5 billion tracks.
