The Starbucks iTunes WiFi music store reviewed | Gear Live

Starbucks iTunes WiFi Music Store - Brilliant!

Starbucks has partnered with Apple to create their own branded iTunes store. This is in itself a good idea, as it allows Starbucks patrons to purchase music they may have heard playing in the Starbucks stores. Starbucks and T-Mobile took this concept one step further--if you happen to be in a Starbucks store with your laptop, iPhone or the new iPod Touch device, and you like the music you hear playing, you can connect to the iTunes store using T-Mobile's WiFi hotspot, free-of-charge, to purchase and download music on the spot. The Starbucks iTunes store also displays the last 10 songs that were playing in that particular store, making it much easier to buy that track that you really liked when you heard it playing. (Note that the free WiFi access only allows customers to browse and download music--not the general Internet service).

This is not only marketing genius, but when you consider the technical infrastructure that would be required i order to make this happen, it's down-right impressive. Consider that they had to integrate the music playing over the Starbucks channel on XM with the Apple iTunes Store systems, along with the T-Mobile hotspot billing systems. I'd be really interesting in discovering more about how they pulled that off from a technical perspective.

The link below points to a really good review of the Starbucks iTunes Store by GearLive, including screen shots taken from inside a Seattle Starbucks store.

The Starbucks iTunes WiFi music store reviewed | Gear Live