Ask LH: How Do I Get The Best Price On Digital Music, Books Or Games?

Dear Lifehacker, I buy all my music and other media online, but prices vary so much from site to site. Is there any way to check prices across all the music or movie sites to make sure I get the best deal?
Thanks, Digital Dealing Doug

Tablet picture from Shutterstock

Dear DDD,

Grabbing deals online for digital media isn’t always as easy as you’d think, and many tools are biased towards US buyers. In some cases, your best bet is still to check prices from multiple providers. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best ways to score deals and compare prices on different media.

Get The Best Deals On Music

With digital music, our favourite tactic isn’t to compare prices, but to make sure you buy gift cards for your preferred music store when they’re on sale. That way, you’ll always score a discount, no matter what tracks you’re after. (You’ll also have the bonus of not sharing your credit card needlessly.) Discounts happen regularly with iTunes, but they’re also available on Google Play and BigPond Music if you’re patient.

Compare Prices On Ebooks

Our favourite real-world book prices comparison site, Booko, does include an ebooks comparison option. Unfortunately, it hasn’t yet been expanded to cover Amazon’s Australian Kindle storefont, so you’ll still need to shop around.

Find The Best Deals On Video Game Downloads

If you really want to just compare prices at a bunch of places at once, we like to start with Is There Any Deal, before moving onto a price comparison tool such as ShockedFish, Deals4Downloads, or CheapShark. None of them are perfect, so which you prefer depends on how much you can deal with a very old design or different levels of unintuitive layout.

All you need to do is type in the game you’re looking for and any of the sites will dish out who has the game you’re looking for the cheapest and you’ll often also get a pricing history. This way you can always make sure you get the best deal, as well as easily take a look at where and when prices have been the lowest.

Happy shopping!

Cheers
Lifehacker

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