As is often the case, there’s been rumours circling for a long time about the possibilities of Apple launching an add-service for iTunes, to give credits for tracks purchased.
Today they’ve announced it’s for real. The new Complete My Album will give iTunes users 79p credit per track for each track on an album that they decide to purchase, if they’ve bought the tracks individually first.
To illustrate, a user who’s already purchased three 79 pence singles and decides to buy the corresponding £7.99 album would be able to download the remaining songs to complete the album for just £5.62, without having to pay for the same tracks again.
Well done for Apple for launching this, but frankly, it only seems right anyway.
There’s two caveats. Customers only have 180 days from the purchase of the first track to buying the whole album, and it doesn’t looks like it’s going to be all albums as they’re referring to “qualifying albums.”
The music industry don’t really have an option in increasing the likelihood of punters buying more music from them. Complete My Album is just such a offering. As to whether people will be tempted into buying those extra tracks from the album, that they purposely didn’t buy when they were originally buying the track is quite another matter.