Friday, April 6, 2007

From the Basement of the Science Building: Tech News


SAN JOSE, CA (AP) -- Apple Inc., the company that popularized selling songs online for 99 cents apiece, now hopes to buoy interest in albums, giving customers credit for purchases of full albums from which they have bought individual tracks. Apple introduced the "Complete My Album" feature Thursday on its iTunes Store. It now gives a full credit of 99 cents for every track the user previously purchased and applies it toward the purchase of the complete album.

For instance, most albums on iTunes cost $9.99 so a customer who already bought three tracks can download the rest of the album for $7.02. Previously, users who bought singles and later opted to buy the album had to pay the full price of the album and ended up with duplicates of those songs. The album price reduction is good for only 180 days after the initial purchase of individual tracks.

About 45 percent of the nearly 2.5 billion songs sold on iTunes were purchased as albums, Cue said.

For a limited period of 90 days, Apple said it will make the "Complete My Album" offer retroactive to users who purchased tracks dating back to the launch of the iTunes Store four years ago.

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