Gear Live reviews Apple’s iTunes Wi-Fi music store with Starbucks integration

“As promised Apple and Starbucks started their rollout of the Starbucks WiFi Music Store in select cities. Gear Live is lucky enough to be in Seattle, the first city to get the special version of the iTunes Music Store in our Starbucks. The service allows laptops, iPhones, and the iPod Touch users to connect for free to the iTunes store while sipping lattes without having to pay for for a T-Mobile Hotspot account… Hopefully this kind of mini-store partnership won’t be limited to Starbucks and we will see many more partnerships in the near future. Having the feature available at concerts could be a huge win for Apple, music venues, and artists alike. Imagine seeing your favorite band perform a concert, and whipping out an iPhone to buy their albums or even songs from the live performance before heading home – the era of location-based e-commerce is close at hand,” Sparky reports for Gear Live.

Full article with screenshots and photos here.

12 Comments

  1. Tried it out today, works like a charm. it does however put an icon along the bottom of the iTunes Wi-Fi store directing you to whats on the speakers in Starbucks currently. Also while I did get todays free song Joker by Dylan, I didn’t see anyway to put that code in and dl it over the iTS from my iPhone.

    Just go into starbucks, select their T-Mobile network and BAM! your there baby.

  2. Ok, I must be doing something wrong. I was just in a Starbucks in Bellevue (across lake Washington from Seattle), and it’s one of the stores that had CDs all over the place with dozen listening stations. I opened my iPhone, connected to their wifi and… nada. I had expected to see some kind of screen saying I’m on the Starbucks iTunes or something, but… Looks like its not ready for prime time yet.

  3. Montex, Starbucks is doing a phased roll-out of this, as apparently there is something they have to set up in each store. Major markets first, then smaller cities, and supposedly hitting all Starbucks by 2009. Sounds like your store hasn’t gotten the upgrade yet, but I’m sure you will long before the one in my rural south Georgia town!

    Official scoop here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/starbucks/

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