In an effort to further its partnership with Apple to provide free wireless iPhone and iPod touch access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, which begins on October 2 with access in 600 New York and Seattle-area locations, Starbucks today announced a number of promotions aimed at expanding the purchase of company-picked music from iTunes.
Most notably, Starbucks will give away 1.5 million iTunes downloads per day from October 2 to November 7, totalling 50 million downloads by the end of the promotion. Each day, over 10,000 Starbucks locations will hand out “Song of the Day” cards allowing customers to download one free track from an artist such as Bob Dylan, Joss Stone, Dave Matthews, Bebel Gilberto, John Mayer, KT Tunstall, John Legend, Annie Lennox, Joni Mitchell, Keith Urban or Paul McCartney.
U.S.-based locations of Starbucks will also begin to sell iTunes Digital Release Cards, which will include not only full albums from selected artists, but also bonus materials such as videos, music videos, bonus tracks and/or digital booklets, depending on the release. The Card must be activated at the Starbucks, and its contents downloaded on a Mac or PC. Starbucks will also offer the “Starbucks Card Plus Two,” a reloadable restaurant card that also entitles the purchaser to download two tracks of his or her choice from the U.S. iTunes Store.
Interestingly, Starbucks also confirmed that its iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store partnership enables users to access the Store not only from the iPhone and iPod touch, but also through laptops running iTunes software. As such, wireless access to iTunes with any of these devices won’t require either a hotspot login or payment of connection fees.