Amazon slashes albums to 29p

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 18 Jun 2009 at 15:26

Amazon accidentally slashed the price of some albums yesterday to only 29p, creating a four-hour period which did little to help the company's profit margins.

Works by Bruce Springsteen, Lily Allen and MGMT were among around 30 albums accidentally priced at less than the cost of a single download - a price reduction of up to 95%.

"I just sort of found the song that I wanted and the song was 69p and the album was 29p, so I just clicked it and downloaded it," said a BBC commenter from Selby called Dan.

"I bought Black Eyed Peas, Calvin Harris - altogether I got about 10 - spent about £2.99 on ten CDs when it should have cost me 60 or 70 quid, so it was quite good," he added.

The mistake was mentioned on several consumer websites, but Amazon hasn't released details of how many sales went through at the incorrect prices. It has been suggested that the mistake could affect this weekend's album sales chart.

"We can confirm that earlier today there was a pricing error on a small number of MP3 albums," said Amazon, speaking to the Telegraph. "This issue has been rectified. Despite our best efforts, with the millions of items available on our website, pricing errors can occur."