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Apple Quietly Ends Free iTunes 'Single of the Week' Promotion After 11 Years
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Greed. Pure greed. It's bad enough that when I walk into Target or Macy's no one ever gives me anything for free and now Apple has decided to abandon its generosity. I rarely ever buy anything from iTunes so it was pleasant to indulge in this weekly promotion as the rest of my music collection is largely pirated. Greed. Pure and simple.
A massive overhaul is long overdue. I have more than 10'000 purchased tracks in my library. I Tunes Match has definitively become unusable with this scale of content. The alternative is to constantly repurchase albums to keep them as purchased items. This is just an expensive confusing mess. The local iTunes Store branch in Switzerland does a really bad job in maintaining the store. They often alter metadata, which causes purchases to disappear temporary or even permanently.
Not to say that the store doesn't support me in finding new or alternative content. It has obviously been a cash-cow for several years. But now it's more like a dying one.
What a load of bologna.
iTunes prices are not at all ridiculous. I'm pretty sure the most expensive movie I have seen is $20. You go into stores like Target and Walmart and you'll see a many BDs more than $20. As far as "older movies" for less than $14.99, you apparently don't check out their weekly sales. This week there are a bunch of action movies that are $7.99, including the Kill Bill movies, Machete and Gangs of New York.
As far as competitive prices in general, Gone Girl is $15 on iTunes, $18 on BD from Amazon. Lucy is $15 on iTunes, WILL BE $23 when its released on BD on iTunes.
And complain all you want about rental pricing because that's set by the movie studios. Google Play, Amazon and every pay TV provider will charge the same prices on those rentals. If you like Redbox, fine. But there are only so many titles that can be stored in any given box and you still have to actually travel to a location to find the movie.
Which effectively means that it did get downloaded on many people's phones unsolicited.
I never understood why they even did it like that. It would have been trivial for them to create a separate page on iTunes with a Free button (like they do with Single of the Week and 12 Days). They could have easily restricted it to existing customers as well if that was an issue. Adding it to all customer's purchase histories, that were also pushed to many million customers through iCloud, was just a stupid move on their part. I wonder whether they could have saved a lot of money if they did it that way.
"/s"
True, but not limited to the iTunes Store. Everything at Apple is now about milking the customers. They even lower the quality for it. Meeting deadlines has gotten more important than delivering adequate quality software and hardware.
They cut this from the Japanese iTunes store a couple of years ago (afaik; just one day it wasn't there anymore).
It was nice to get some musical variety & be exposed to something new without having to do any searching.
Unfortunate to see it go from the US store as well.
It was nice to get some musical variety & be exposed to something new without having to do any searching.
Unfortunate to see it go from the US store as well.
Same here. La Roux "Bulletproof" from a 2012 freebee gives me a smile every time it plays in one of my playlists.
Since the article mentioned other countries, I'll note that the Japanese itunes store stopped doing free song of the day when they turned off DRM and turned on 256kbps AAC.(Feb 2012, according to this site).
I should clarify that I meant 1 star within my itunes library. I filter out my 1 star and 2 star music in most lists I create which is why I stated that they get lost in the library (as in never to show up in any list due to the star filter I apply). Sorry for the confusion. I would never leave a rating in the itunes store; rarely leave it even for stuff I like.
This is the last drop!
I think that example shows us clearer than ever, that now is finally the time to open up a charity foundation to help Apple at last!
After selling us their hardware under the manufacturing costs, delivering the rock stable and super fast Yosemite and iOS 8.1.2, caring not to increase app prices in Europe at all costs, I think, Apple Deserves our support!
Don't let Microsoft do it the second time!
I think that example shows us clearer than ever, that now is finally the time to open up a charity foundation to help Apple at last!
After selling us their hardware under the manufacturing costs, delivering the rock stable and super fast Yosemite and iOS 8.1.2, caring not to increase app prices in Europe at all costs, I think, Apple Deserves our support!
Don't let Microsoft do it the second time!
Quote:
I contacted iTunes Support and they told me the decision was made to drop the free Single of the Week. Seems they don't want people browsing the Store anymore. I told them that the free single each week got me to the Store and I usually bought a few songs. Now, there's less reason to go. They've stopped the free single in other countries too.
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They aren't stupid. No doubt they did the math and worked out that not enough were visiting the store and purchasing additional music to make up for the cost of the program. Just because a handful here did that, means nothing . If it was making a profit why would they cancel it?
"hey Tim, every week we run this program called "free single" and so far we are getting a million $ a week in additional profits as result" - "right, cancel it".
I contacted iTunes Support and they told me the decision was made to drop the free Single of the Week. Seems they don't want people browsing the Store anymore. I told them that the free single each week got me to the Store and I usually bought a few songs. Now, there's less reason to go. They've stopped the free single in other countries too.
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They aren't stupid. No doubt they did the math and worked out that not enough were visiting the store and purchasing additional music to make up for the cost of the program. Just because a handful here did that, means nothing . If it was making a profit why would they cancel it?
"hey Tim, every week we run this program called "free single" and so far we are getting a million $ a week in additional profits as result" - "right, cancel it".
This would include streaming only. Not available outside the US in the near future. Yes, the record companies are also greedy. The negotiation with the worldwide copyrights owners would be complex and time consuming.
The price would be o.k. if the service worked reliable. This is however not so sure if you consider the iTunes Match mess.
I just hope this doesn't bode as bad news for the free app of the week. Love that!
I noticed Starbucks has discontinued their free app of the week; they're now only doing music.
I noticed Starbucks has discontinued their free app of the week; they're now only doing music.
Thank you Apple for letting us try at least 1555 free U.S. songs and letting us keep what we liked.
It wasn't the only way to find new music and new artists, but it was a fine way for some of us to explore new music we would otherwise have missed. Many of us have purchased music by artists we discovered this way.
Thank you as well to the volunteers who maintained the free iTunes lists in the forums for all these years, making it easy to find the latest offerings even before there was a convenient "Free on iTunes" link in the store. Forum volunteers tracked free iTunes for Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S. In the beginning it required detective work to find the free songs each week!
It wasn't the only way to find new music and new artists, but it was a fine way for some of us to explore new music we would otherwise have missed. Many of us have purchased music by artists we discovered this way.
Thank you as well to the volunteers who maintained the free iTunes lists in the forums for all these years, making it easy to find the latest offerings even before there was a convenient "Free on iTunes" link in the store. Forum volunteers tracked free iTunes for Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S. In the beginning it required detective work to find the free songs each week!
Love people jumping on apple for this. You could offer to pay the artist 99p per download if they run it free.
Using last years 800 million device figure (just iOS devices) if just 1% download that's $8m add the free app download which is a dam sight more popular apple spends more than any other phone/tablet manufacturer on freebies.
Using last years 800 million device figure (just iOS devices) if just 1% download that's $8m add the free app download which is a dam sight more popular apple spends more than any other phone/tablet manufacturer on freebies.
I never really bothered with them; I won't with music subscriptions either. Both our lives will go on.