There was a rumor, many moons ago, that Apple might eventually offer credit for individual song purchases when a user buys the entire album later. However, it seems that the rumor has popped up once again, except in "slightly less than rumor" form: The New York Times.
In an article about the value of the album and how artists are dealing with today's digital music structure, the New York Times makes mention that Apple is planning to do exactly that:
At the same time, the industry is straining to shore up the album as long as possible, in part by prodding listeners who buy one song to purchase the rest of a collection. Apple, in consultation with several labels, has been planning to offer iTunes users credit for songs they have already purchased if they then choose to buy the associated album in a certain period of time, according to people involved in the negotiations.
While this isn't quite as open as the "receive credit whenever you buy the album" theory, "within a certain period of time" is still somewhat good. Right now, if a user buys certain songs individually but decides to buy the album later, they have to pay for those individual songs twice.
Theoretically, this means that if you bought two songs at 99 cents a pop from an album and then later decide to pick up the whole thing (within Apple's currently-unspecified time frame) that's normally priced at $9.99, the album would actually end up costing you $8.01.
The mention of "several labels," however, gives me pause. Would this policy only apply to albums from certain artists, and not entirely across the iTunes Store? If that's the case, it would introduce a level of inconsistency that is not very typical of Apple and the iTunes Store. For now, since we are very sparse on details, we're going to have to assume that such a deal is still being worked out and that Steve Jobs will work his magical powers to ensure that we'll be able to get such a deal across the entire iTS, not just part of it.
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