iTunes Store launch at Starbucks

It’s about time Seattle got an Apple-related thing before anyone else (aside from New York). That’s right, the Apple-Starbucks alliance has officially begun, going live on a Tuesday morning at Starbucks stores all over the two cities mentioned above. Since I live in Seattle, I was able to test it out on an iPod touch at a local Starbucks location.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store only works for iPhones and iPods that have been upgraded to software version 1.1.1 or higher – if you’ve unlocked your iPhone, you won’t be able to access this without upgrading. Once in the iTunes Music Store, though, the Starbucks part hooked in seamlessly. When connected to the “tmobile” wireless network, the four icons on the bottom of the music store screen will slide to the right to make room for a Starbucks logo. Tapping on this gives access to the Starbucks screen, which includes the currently playing song in addition to recently played songs and a few other lists of music that Starbucks thinks you might want to buy.

The Starbucks section functions just like the rest of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, linking in song titles, artists, and albums. The download speed was decent, as the free song of the day (Jokerman, by Bob Dylan) downloaded in about a minute. The free song process was rather cumbersome, as the display advertising free songs was paradoxically missing any free song cards. I ended up having to ask the barista for one, which turned out to be behind the counter. 

However, I noticed something interesting while the song was downloading – even though the Internet is blocked by T-Mobile/Starbucks’ pay wall, you can still access apple.com and starbucks.com. This means that even if you don’t have iTunes installed on your laptop, you could still download it, install it, and buy the song that’s playing, all without leaving your seat. In fact, if you wanted you could go on Apple’s website and buy a Mac or iPod on the spot.

The main complaint I have is that there’s no (visible, at least) way to redeem a free song card directly to an iPhone or iPod touch. You’d think it would be possible, given that either one has a keyboard available, but I ended up having to download the song on my PowerBook.

Aside from the problems with free songs, however, the Starbucks portion of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store works as advertised. Although it isn’t likely to contribute much money to either Apple or Starbucks, it will serve to increase awareness of iTunes and the iPod to all of the many, many people who buy coffee there every day. If enough of them buy songs, we can only hope that this program will be expanded – although if it ever gets to the point where I can download the muzak playing in the clothing department, it will have gone too far.

on-site report by Eric Nguyen