When coffee and technology met, the Internet cafe was born. It would grow up to become wireless, and laptops would become more common than newspapers or magazines in coffee houses around the world.
Engadget happens to be one of the blogs that I enjoy reading for my tech/gadget fix. Mainly it shows me cool stuff that I will never be able to convince my wife to let me buy, but today it brought a fascinating nugget to my, and hopefully your attention.
Back in early September Apple/Starbucks announced a new feature that will appear on the new touch iPods that will allow people to buy one of the recently played songs (whee!).
The big kickoff event is scheduled for October 2nd. According to Engadget they are kicking things off by giving away 50 million songs from October 2nd to November 7th.
You heard me, 50 million.
That’s 1.5 million “Song of the Day” cards every day. Of course the song of the day will have been carefully selected by Starbucks/Apple. The ironic thing is that most stores will not have the in-stop iTunes download capabilities installed become the promotional period ends. Full functionality is not expected until the end of 2009.
I have to give it to them, its a great campaign that really costs them nothing. Chances are they have cut some sort of royalty release deal with the artists. And who could blame the artists, its a great way to get the public listening to their music in hopes that they will buy more of it in the iTunes store.
The sad thing is that most people will look at Starbucks with even bigger doe eyes than before. I like Apple, they have always been the underdog in my eyes. To see them partner with Starbucks, well all I can say is if it helps Apple, then its okay with me.
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