March 30, 2007
iTunes - "Complete My Album"
Posted by Larry Karnowski at March 30, 2007 8:37 AMGot an interesting email from the iTunes Music Store this morning about a new "Complete My Album" feature they've added. The skinny is this -- if you buy a song from an album for $0.99, and then you decide you want the whole album, you get a $0.99 credit for already having bought your song.
This is quite a bit better than before, where if you bought a song or two and decided to buy the album later, you'd have to pay the full $9.99 (or sometimes higher, sigh) price and buy your songs again. (I did this on an occasion or two, much to my displeasure.)
I wouldn't laud this as a "great boon to the digital music industry" but more of a "why the hell didn't y'all do this from the beginning?"
New internet rule, "y'all" should not be typed in a post evar. The whole point of "y'all" is to simplify the SPEECH of "you all." Typing "y'all" actually takes more effort than just typing "you" or "they." ;-)
Just kidding - I'm a jerkface.
It's pretty cool that they implemented that feature. Now they just need to keep a purchase history for you, and iTMS will be perfect! :-)
Posted by: matt at March 30, 2007 1:49 PMHmm, they definitely keep a purchase history for you, but I'm not exactly positive how to get there... and yet, iTMS is still far from perfect.
Oh, I was forgetting something --- "far from perfect... y'all." ;-)
So you're telling me if I buy "The Best of Rick James" I get a $.99 credit for "Super Freak"?!
Yeah, I wonder how well they can keep track? Like I accidentally bought James Brown's "Sex Machine" twice because I got it once from whatever album it's on, and then again from a greatest hits collection -- iTunes couldn't tell it was the same song.
So like, if I want to buy Alison Krauss' new collection of soundtracks and stuff, will I get credit for the three or so songs on it I've already purchased, but from the respective soundtracks, or other people's album's? I'm guessing no.
But it's a nice gesture, for the times when it all lines up right.
Posted by: stacy at March 31, 2007 5:22 AM"Nice gesture" my foot! This was a broken feature that they've finally fixed!
Kudos to them for finally fixing it... but still, why was it broken in the first place? Doesn't "sampling the album to decide whether or not to buy the whole album" make sense as a key use case for iTunes?
I guess it was just too lucrative to charge us twice for as long as they could. Still, with that logic, I wonder why they ever fixed it? Anyway, cool, glad it's fixed.
Posted by: larry at April 1, 2007 9:44 PM
