Apple stops ripping off customers but still no subscription music

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 30 March 2007 14:26

Opinion and Analysis

Apple’s new “Complete My Album” service does what should have been around from day one and now stops charging users double for songs they already own – but where’s the subscription service?

One of the great things about Apple’s iTunes music store is that it lets you buy individual tracks from albums, especially on albums where there’s one or two killer tracks, with the rest all filler.

After all, the phrase ‘all killer, no filler’ wouldn’t exist if every track on every album was worth buying, let alone listening to.

Still, there are plenty of people that do enjoy getting the entire album, so they can hear the artist’s full album of music, as intended, and of course some songs appeal to some people more than others. After all, while there’s usually universal recognition of what is a hit song and what isn’t, that’s not always the case.

So, it comes as some surprise to discover that if you had purchased a track on iTunes at 99c, you had to pay for it again as part of the complete album price if you decided to buy the album that the track came from.

It would have made sense for iTunes to find out if had already purchased a track from an album in question and not made you buy it again, lowering the total price you’d need to pay for an album, but it seems that this feature has only just been switched on today, rather than years ago when the iTunes music store was a store that only sold music.

Obviously in the ‘old days’, when singles and albums came only on tape, vinyl or CD, there was no credit for previously having purchased a single if you then decided to buy the complete album, but in the modern digital world, there is no reason why this discount cannot apply.

Of course, in the inimitable Apple style, this deficiency was not highlighted as Apple and/or the music companies having ripped off loyal customers for years, but is earmarked as a breakthrough that “helps customers grow and enjoy their music collections”.

Eddy Cue, with his wonderfully musically linked surname, is Apple’s vice president of iTunes, and he said in Apple’s press release that “Music fans can now round out their music collections by upgrading their singles into complete albums with just one click, and get full credit for those songs they have previously purchased from iTunes. Complete My Album is a wonderful new way that iTunes helps customers grow and enjoy their music collections.”

According to Apple, Complete My Album “offers customers up to 180 days after first purchasing individual songs from any qualifying album to purchase the rest of that album at a reduced price. When users buy any song on iTunes the corresponding album will immediately appear on their personalized Complete My Album page with the reduced price listed. For example, a user who’s already purchased three 99 cent singles and decides to buy the corresponding $9.99 album would be able to download the remaining songs to complete the album for just $7.02, without having to buy the singles again”.

So, despite Complete My Album needing to have been a feature since day one, at least it is something that consumers can now take advantage of, should they wish to add some filler to their collections.

But the two big questions remain: when will Steve Jobs remove DRM from tracks where independent artists have specifically said they don’t want it, given Jobs' anti-DRM manifesto, and when will Apple give consumers the choice of buying their music through an subscription service at a set monthly fee?

Hell might have to freeze over first, but in Apple’s case, that’s happened once before when iTunes was released for PCs. There is, therefore, hope that hell might freeze over again one day!