“That tall mocha Frappuccino never sounded so good,” Ellen Lee reports for The San Francisco.
“Apple Inc. and Starbucks on Wednesday introduced the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at about 360 Starbucks coffee shops in the Bay Area,” Lee reports.
“The new service lets customers shop for music wirelessly through iTunes at Starbucks for free. Rolling out across the nation, the Bay Area launch included stores from Santa Rosa to Gilroy. ‘You’d be hard pressed not to find a store that doesn’t have it,’ said Eddie Cue, vice president of Apple’s iTunes,” Lee reports.
“The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store operates on the new iPod Touch, iPhone and Wi-Fi-enabled PCs and Macs using one of the latest versions of iTunes. Users are automatically connected to the coffee shop’s wireless Internet network and can see – and purchase – the song that’s currently playing in the store. Each coffee shop is configured individually so that the song piped through the store’s speakers is the same song that appears on the front page of the user’s iTunes,” Lee reports.
“Already available in New York and Seattle, the service is expected to be available in the nation’s 6,000 company-operated Starbucks coffee shops by the end of 2009,” Lee reports.
Full article here.
360 Bay Area locations? That’s what, like only a fifth of them?
Apple always make sure to attack the enemy’s strongest base first!
Peet’s coffee is better.
Free Wi-Fi, good. Taking control of the itunes home page, so what? Can I get my email for free as well, or do I have to pay for that?
I wonder what takes so long to roll out this program. I think the target for having all Starbuck’s on the system is something like December 2009!
” ‘You’d be hard pressed not to find a store that doesn’t have it,’ said Eddie Cue, vice president of Apple’s iTunes,” Lee reports.”
SB ‘You’d be hard pressed to find a store that doesn’t have it,”
this is a big investment and gamble….very impressed
Peet used to be Starbucks partner, but felt there was no future in coffee drinks. Beans only. The rest is sort of history.
Each store needs special equipment that serves both paying customers and those running iTunes, iPhone, or iPod touch. It’s not just a simple matter. That equipment also needs to be able to communicate the song information to the devices.That also means the “player” needs some way of knnowing that information, not just a regular CD player will do. Lastly, it needs to communicate the iTunes store URL that links the song back to the song in the store catalog.
Yeah Peet’s is the best. Starbucks coffee I think is awful – always tastes burnt. I guess that’s not what we’re talking about here… but this story is kind of a non-story — we knew it was coming for months. So toilet paper rolls – over or under?
FYI: you can visit Apple.com, Check your .Mac email/account.
And you can visit any .mac based website! For free!!
gman: cool! thanks for that info! i’ll try that tomorrow.
We met at Starbucks. Not at the same Starbucks but we saw each other at different Starbucks across the street from each other. I was on my mac, and you were on your mac….