Digital Media Bargains & Freebies

I shop at the Jedi Knight level. I rarely pay full retail price for anything, and I know that a bargain on crap is no bargain at all: quality counts, too.

I’ve spent the past twenty-odd years perfecting my bargain-hunting superpowers. You, on the other hand, can simply bookmark this page and come back to check it from time to time.

You’re welcome.


BookGorilla Free & Bargain Email Alert

This is a personalized, daily listing of free and bargain-priced Kindle books, delivered right to your email inbox. When you sign up for the FREE BookGorilla Free & Bargain Email Alert, you get to specify which genres you like so you never have to wade through listings you’re not interested in to get to the good stuff. You will only receive one email alert per day, and you even get to specify how many books you’d like to have listed in that email!

And just like Digital Media Mom, BookGorilla keeps its subscriber list private: they will never sell or share your subscriber information.

Click here to sign up for the BookGorilla Free & Bargain Email Alert.


Amazon Digital Media

Amazon is the master —some would say supervillain— of loss leaders. Amazon spent its first five years in the red, all in the name of online retailer world domination. They succeeded, but they’re not resting on those laurels. At any given time, hundreds of Instant Videos, MP3 albums and apps are available at discounts of 30% or more on Amazon, and there’s lots of FREE music and apps available every day. Use these links to easily find the ones that are not only cheap/free, but rated a minimum of 4/5 stars by customers to boot.

Amazon Instant Videos

The standard price to buy a new release Instant Video movie on Amazon is $14.99. The standard price to buy an all-time bestselling Instant Video movie that isn’t a new release on Amazon is $12.99. The standard price for all other Instant Video movies on Amazon is $9.99. When you can get them for anything less than $10 you’re getting a deal, but plenty of ’em are priced much lower than that, even. And we’re talking some box office hits and critical darlings here, not just the stuff you’d see in the Best Buy bargain bin.

The sale items can change from week to week and day to day, so check back often if you’re looking to make the transition from disc media to digital video and don’t want to, or can’t afford to, pay full price for those digital copies.

  • Instant Video Movies Now On Sale For $4.98-$4.99
  • Instant Video Movies Now On Sale For $5.98-$5.99
  • Instant Video Movies Now On Sale For $6.98-$6.99
  • Instant Video Movies Now On Sale For $7.98-$7.99
  • Instant Video Movies Now On Sale For $8.98-$8.99

Trade In Your Discs For Amazon Store Credit (Amazon pays the shipping costs)

Trade In Your Electronics For Amazon Store Credit (Amazon pays the shipping costs)

Amazon MP3 Albums and Singles

The standard price for a new release MP3 album on Amazon is $11.99 – $12.99. The standard price for MP3 albums that are not new releases is $9.99, and at any given time thousands more are on sale at $7.99, $5.99, $5 and $2.99-$3.99 each. The standard price for a new release MP3 single is $1.29, and the standard price for all other singles is 99 cents. But at any given time, thousands of MP3 singles are marked down to 69 cents or less.

In addition, while they don’t make them as easy to find as it used to be, at any given time there are hundreds of totally FREE MP3 albums and thousands of totally FREE MP3 songs on Amazon, too.

In this section I’m not going to limit the lists to music rated 4/5 stars or higher, because those ratings don’t necessarily reflect the overall popularity of a given album or song. But the free list results are sorted in order of highest average customer review to lowest, because let’s face it: some stuff that’s being given away free isn’t even worth your time. Don’t sell the free album list short though, because you can find a lot of great music label samplers there, and some very highly-rated holiday, relaxation, folk, world, and kids’ music too.

  • MP3 albums currently priced at $7.99
  • MP3 albums currently priced at $5.99
  • MP3 albums currently priced at $5
  • MP3 albums currently priced at $2.99-$3.99

69-cent MP3 Songs

FREE MP3 albums, in order by average customer review rating

FREE MP3 songs, in order by average customer review rating

Trade In Your CDs & Vinyl For Amazon Store Credit (Amazon pays the shipping costs)

Amazon App Store

I can’t say there’s a “standard” price for apps and games in the Amazon App Store, because the prices are set by the developer and they’re all over the map. However, at any given time there are thousands that can be had for $1.99, 99 cents, or FREE.

As I write this there are over 31,000 free apps and tens of thousands for 99 cents or $1.99, so the lists below are limited to those with an average review rating of 4/5 stars or better.

Apps That Are Currently FREE & Rated 4/5 Stars Or Better

  • Apps Now On Sale For 99 Cents & Rated 4/5 Stars Or Better
  • Apps Now On Sale For $1.99 & Rated 4/5 Stars Or Better

Trade In Your Video Games For Amazon Store Credit (Amazon pays the shipping costs)

FREE Kindle Content

Amazon Prime members: click here to browse the full catalog of Prime Kindle Lending Library books on the Amazon site. Note that once you find a book you want to borrow, you’ll still have to look it up from your Kindle or Fire to complete the borrow.

They sure don’t shout it from the mountaintop, but Amazon has a whole page filled with nothing but links to FREE Kindle books and content.

Open Culture’s 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices – some can only be read online, but the public domain stuff is provided in numerous downloadable formats, too. There are also handy links to send the files direct to DropBox, Google Drive or OneDrive for most of the downloadable titles, or you can just click the title to open a download dialog and save the file to your device or computer’s hard drive. Click here for a DMM post with more information.

Trade In Your Hard-Copy Books & Textbooks For Amazon Store Credit (Amazon pays the shipping costs)

Instapaper

Instapaper is a great, FREE little browser add-on that allows you to copy articles off the web and send them to your Kindle, Fire or other mobile devices. I wrote an article all about the site/service for Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily; click here to read it. Otherwise, just follow the link below to set up your free Instapaper account and get started.

Instapaper

The Humble Bundle

HumbleBundle is a pay-what-you-want site that connects app developers, game developers and writers direct to the digital media buying public. You get top-quality, brand-name digital content bundles there, the app/game developers and authors get higher royalties since the middle man distributor is cut out of the equation, and a portion of proceeds from all sales goes to charity. If you decide to pay more than whatever the average purchase price is at the time you’re buying (and I mean even if it’s just one cent higher), you’ll get bonus apps, games or ebooks, too! You even get to choose how much of your specified purchase price goes to each party involved: the developer/author, the HumbleBundle site, and the charity.

There’s a new bundle of games, apps or ebooks on offer there every few weeks, so this is a site you’re going to want to keep on top of.

The Humble Bundle