Coinstar - Now with iTunes

Coinstar turns loose change into iTunes songs - Yahoo! News

Peter Cohen - Playlist

Self-service coin counting company Coinstar has announced an expansion of its Coin to Card program. Now your loose change can be used for iTunes Music Store songs.

Coinstar machines — popular in grocery stores, drug stores and other retail locations — let you turn your loose change into paper currency. You dump in your change, the machine counts it up and typically feeds you a paper receipt which you can redeem for cash at a nearby cashier or register.

Coinstar’s machines impose an 8.9 percent processing fee for their Coin to Cash program, but the Coin to Card program exacts no such fee — so you get the full value of your loose change.

The machine will either spit out a gift card or a paper “eCertificate” instead. The eCertificate can then be used to buy products online. In addition to iTunes Music Store, Coinstar has redemption programs established with Virgin Digital, Borders, Hollywood Video, Amazon.com and other mass-market retailers.

Participation varies, so make sure to visit the Web site to find a Coinstar machine in your area that can redeem eCertificates for use at the iTunes Music Store.

Sorry about the long clip. Yahoo News clips tend to disappear very quickly and I'm waaay too lazy to set up a page host somewhere.

Anyway, I mentioned the Coinstar thing a while back. Since the last post I actually tried out the eCertificate thing for Amazon.com and it gets a surprsing two thumbs up. Dump your change in and it prints out a code. enter the code at amazon and voila. You get phat l00t for nothing but a bunch of loose change.

You can use the change for iTunes if you want. I personally ain't giving iTunes a dime until I can do what I want with the music I buy.