Donovan’s View: iTunes Bargain Bin Update for US, UK stores
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 20, 2008 at 7:00am
By Gaurang Donovan
There is a new development for users of the iTunes Store in the United States and the United Kingdom. A week ago the “bargain bin” of Apple’s iTunes Store in the United States appeared for the first time with a limited time special price offering for purchases of selected albums and movies. It featured a single album as $4.99 “Album of the Week” and another seven albums for the same price as Albums under $5.
The second part of the “bargain bin” was a single film as $4.99 “Movie of the Week” and another nine films for the same price as “Movies Under $5”.
This week has new offerings in addition to two new parts to the “bargain bin” while there are new selections of albums and movies under the previous two categories.
The two new parts are:
“TV shows under $10” – with 13 series offerings
“Movies under $10” – with 12 films offerings
The link to the page in the USA store is below: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageBigSale_Movies
“Movies under $10” are combined with “Movies under $5” on the same page.
There are also smaller “bricks” advertising their existence on first page of the store.
The United Kingdom version of the store has its own “bargain bin” with two parts so far. They are:
“TV Series under £10” – with 9 series offerings
“Albums under £4” – with 18 albums offerings and one additional “Album of the Week”
(though the small directional button reads “Albums under £5”)
The link to the page is: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageBigSale_Music and there are also smaller “bricks” advertising their existence on first page of the store.
There has also been an eight-panel swoosh at the bottom of the first page that offers films under the title of “Best of British under £7” for some time now.
So far I can only find the “bargain bin” in these two stores and I welcome the development. Let’s hope in time the bargain bin is extended to other countries’ stores offering movies and TV shows as well.
And let’s also hope the increased flexibility in pricing of album pricing as well as television and movies is continued and recognized to be price competitive by those voicing criticisms in the past. The reduction in price per episode from $1.99 to $0.99 of season 1 of Alfred Hitchcock Presents series when NBC returned to the iTunes Store in September hardly received a mention anywhere I was reading on the internet. With the bargain bin offer, one can buy the 14 song album “Escape” by Journey for $5 and six episodes of Fawlty Towers, Season One for $10. Those are price competitive with my searches.
A further suggestion would see another expansion of the bargain bin to include “Audiobook of the Week” at some special price point.
This week’s offerings are listed below.
US Store
Album of the Week
Escape – Journey
Albums under $5
Dangerous Man – Trace Adkins
CrazySexyCool – TLC
Dirt – Alice in Chains
The Best of Vanilla Ice – Vanilla Ice
Ok Go – Ok Go
Movies under $5
Shakespeare in Love
Rambo: First Blood
Groundhog Day
Armageddon
Goodwill Hunting
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Barbie in the Nutcracker
Stick It!
Charlie’s Angels
10 Things I Hate About You
The Rock
High Fidelty
Movies under $10
National Treasure
Deja Vu
Reservoir Dogs
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Pirates of the Carribean
Dirty Dancing
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Hellboy
Glory Road
National Lampoon’s Van Wilder
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Goal! The Dream Begins
TV Shows under $10
The Sarah Silverman Program, Series 1
Family Guy
Little Britain, Series 3
South Park: Matt and Trey’s Top 10
30 Rock – Tina’s Top 5
The Starter Wife: The Mini-Series
Dane Cook: Vicious Circle
The Best of MADtv
Fawlty Towers, Season 1
Fawlty Towers, Season 2
Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Season 1
Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Season 2
Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Season 3
United Kingdom Store
Album of the Week
The Sound of Girls Aloud: The Greatest Hits (Deluxe)
Albums under £4
Beautiful World – Take That
Sleep Through The Static – Jack Johnson
Robyn – Robyn
X – Kylie Minogue
Emergency (Bonus Tracks Version) – The Pigeon Detectives
The Trick To Life – The Hoosiers
Final Straw – Snow Patrol
Coco – Colbie Caillat
You Can Do Anything – The Zutons
Up All Night – Razorlight
Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against The Machine
Takk… – Sigur Rós
Collected – Massive Attack
Demon Days – Gorillaz
Overpowered – Róisín Murphy
St. Jude (Bonus Tracks Version) – The Courteneers
Little Dreamer – Beth Rowley
Oracular Spectacular – MGMT
TV series under £10
Smack the Pony, Series 1
Life on Mars, Series 2
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Shameless, Series 1
Sugar Rush, Series 1
Derren Brown Trick o fthe Mind, Series 1
South Park, Season 1
We Can Be Heroes, Season 1
Cashmere Mafia, Season 1
(Columnist Gaurang Donovan is an Australian “mystery man” who wishes to keep his identify secret for personal and business reasons—Dennis)
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
