Posted by Darrell Etherington
Sony has a new app out today in the U.S. that offers up a deep discount on one album from the artists on its record label over the course of a 24 hour period, with a new one arriving each day. The discounts in “Album of the Day” will vary, but can offer as much as 70 percent off the standard sticker price, meaning for most albums in the iTunes Store you might pay as little as $3 for a full album, by artists including Alicia Keys, Santana, Aerosmith, Kings of Leon and more.
The app is described by Sony as the “first music flash sales app,” and triggers purchases through the iTunes store, meaning it’ll show up in your iTunes music library right away. Daily notifications will inform app users what album is on offer, and they also get previews and contextual information in the app for the album on sale, too
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Sony’s app is making the leap to the U.S. and other countries after initially debuting in Germany back in March. The company was clearly happy with its performance in its launch market, and says that it managed to help albums selected for daily sales rocket to the top of the music charts in the German iTunes store consistently.
This deep discounting offer a way for Sony to get consumers excited about traditional digital music sales, in which they pay money for a one-time purchase of music in either song or album units. More and more, users are turning to streaming services, and that’s finally beginning to erode the growth of digital music sales online, meaning labels and providers of traditional storefronts need to do something if they hope to keep people away from less lucrative streaming sales models, which offer users access to all the music they want for around the price of a single album per month.