Apple have introduced a new service within iTunes which some in the industry hope will boost the sale of albums in the digital music sector.
The move is a response to a definite trend in digital music where by consumers tend to buy more individual tracks than entire albums, picking and choosing from an album's tracklisting, rather than opting to buy the entire LP.
The new service, called 'Complete My Album', will enable users who buy albums from iTunes to get a discount if they have already bought individual tracks off it via the download service (providing the two purchases come within 180 days of each other). So that if someone has bought a track off an album, and then they opt to buy the album itself, they get a 99 cents discount on the album price. The service hopes to encourage people who have bought single tracks to consider later buying the whole album. The theory goes that people are more likely to do that if they don't think they are having to pay for the same track twice.
Commenting on the new service, Apple's VP Of iTunes, Eddy Cue, told reporters: ''Once we [iTunes customers] bought a song, we wondered why we had to buy it again if we wanted the album. We hope this service helps us sell more songs ultimately, and from the customer point of the view, we think it's the right thing to do".