Posted on Friday, April 14, 2006 - 12:37 am:

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Music labels get nickel and dimed
Change counting firm Coinstar will accept coins for iTunes gift cards and Virgin Digital eCertificates.
April 12, 2006: 9:50 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Coinstar is changing its tune.

The coin-counting machine company now lets customers exchange coins for an iTunes gift card or a Virgin Digital eCertificate at Coinstar machines, the company said.


The "Coin to Card" program is currently available on 5,000 Coinstar machines in the U.S., the company said.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/12/news/companies/coinstar/index.htm?source=yahoo_q uote


Unlike standard coins-to-cash transactions, which have a fee, customers can forgo the standard 8.9 percent processing fee to get credit for digital downloads.

Coinstar (Research) offers iTunes gift cards for as little as $5 dollars in change, a denomination which has previously been unavailable through Apple (Research).

Since 1992, the coin counter has processed more than $12 billion dollars in change in over 350 million transactions.

There is currently an estimated $10.5 billion of spare change sitting idle in American households, according to Coinstar.

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