Download in a Box? Apple to Sell Album-Specific iTunes Giftcards in Stores

Not content to just dominate music sales online, Apple will soon be taking up space in your local retail chain. According to Billboard, this fall, the company will begin selling album-specific iTunes gift cards inside DVD-sized boxes with album art on the cover in stores like Best Buy, Starbucks and Safeway. Albums by Norah Jones and Maroon 5 may be among the first offered, at prices said to range from $11.99 to $14.99 -- which may include bonus tracks or videos since the price is a bit higher than iTunes' ususal $9.99 per album fee. The cards could help boost sales over the holidays and introduce heartland shoppers to downloading, but may accelerate the decline of physical CD sales and hurt brick-and-mortar sales in the long run. But for the first time in a while, consumers will be able to grab something physical -- an album cover, at least -- along with their download.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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