Thanks, Apple. Even though you’re a bit late with this, I still appreciate it. You see, today Apple released a new feature for iTunes called “Complete My Album.” It’s kinda sorta self explanatory, but not really. Read on if you want to know more.

The Complete My Album feature has it’s own special page in iTunes. There, iTunes checks all of your purchased music and displays all the albums you have purchased tracks from (e.g. you purchased 3 out of 12 songs) Now that’s a OK feature in itself, it may help you rediscover some artists. The real fun is when you see the price. Rather than the standard $9.99 deal, you get a $0.99 credit for each song you’ve already purchased. Otherwise, you’d be buying a song twice. Sure, $0.99 isn’t much, but it’s simply depressing to know you’re paying for something twice. There is a time limit though, but it’s reasonable– you have 6 months from the date of purchase or else your “credit” runs out. But right now iTunes has a special offer, letting you get credit on every song you’ve ever purchased, e.g. a song you bought a year ago can be credited if you buy that album. It doesn’t appear that this feature is for every album, but it is for a good number of them. Hopefully in the coming months this feature will expand to the entire iTunes catalog.

This is a great feature for me personally because I tend to buy one, maybe two tracks from an artist/album at a time. Very rarely I end up buying the whole album and realize I’ll be spending $2-3 on songs I already own. Just open up iTunes and you’ll see the link for the new page on the right under Quick Links.