When Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched the company's iTunes Music Store, he compared each song's 99c price tag with the cost of a latte. The coffee analogy has proved oddly prescient, since Apple may soon be serving up song downloads to Starbucks customers.

Next Tuesday, the coffee shop chain will announce its intention to launch an in-store music download service, BusinessWeek reports today. Starbucks calls the service "a completely new retail experience" and "represents a breakthrough for music consumers, providing them with enhanced music customization, greater convenience and new ways to discover emerging artists".

Its partner is HP, which will be providing a stack of tablet PCs punters can use to select songs, play them and even burn them to CD. It's also providing server infrastructure and printers for label art, apparently.

Presumably all this will happen over the store's wireless network, courtesy of Starbucks' deal with T-Mobile.

Complete Story at the Register

overpriced coffee with overpriced music with limited playback options.

aparently that's what they think the masses wants

I've been to Starbucks once..had one of their "flavored coffees" (and I am a coffee-holic...always buck flavored grounds)...never went back....horrible stuff....

This "partnering" crap always disgusts me...
"partnering"....Yuck!

actually this could do some good, because it's exposing more people to the suckiness that is DRM.

* more people will realize how much DRM sucks, and will join the boycott (or at least won't buy music online ever again)

Starbucks = cat-piss

DRM = bullshit

I'm a carbonated beverage person myself. Never went to Starbucks, and I probably never will.

"When Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched the company's iTunes Music Store, he compared each song's 99c price tag with the cost of a latte. The coffee analogy has proved oddly prescient, since Apple may soon be serving up song downloads to Starbucks customers."

Okay.... Lets just add up apples and oranges and see what we get. Confounding variables??? Oh wait you cant add numbers from two seperate base number systems with a different base without converting the base of one.

I would say that a consumable is very different from a sensory input...

I went to a Starbucks in Hawai'i once and bought a brownie. That's the last time I give them 3 dollars.

Come to St. Louis everyone, I think the only Starbucks I've seen is in the airport (to make all the Starbucks loyalists feel at home when they get here).

purfus is going intellectual on us.

You can't put DRM in coffee can you? Watch out...

I wouldn't be able to reproduce

=)

Starbucks, overpriced crap
I-Tunes/DRM, overpriced crap

are they gonna have this at the Starbucks across the street from the Starbucks in houston

Aside from the stupidity of offering DRM music, this is an interesting attempt by the market to create new interest and demand in a digital product (which is what we've been saying all along -- find ways to deal with reality and make money). If the experiment fails of its own accord because the product is crappy, so be it. But the government should not abet these operations by mandating that all product have DRM.

No coffee or tea for me. Just give me good old Chicago tap water.

They're also changing names of their stores to be more suitable:

iStarTunesAppleJacksBucks$$$4MeNotYou-icrosoft

Support mom and pop coffee houses that offer free wifi.

Jim Rome said it best on his show a few years back when he described the owner of Starbucks as a "legalized drug dealer."

Now, they're going to offer DRM-infested music. Great. Just what we need. More crap that'll do us more harm to our health than good.

As someone who's worked in "the coffee business" for more than three years, I can safely commit my opinion to the public that Starbucks makes (not necessarily has) the worst coffee you can buy.

As someone who has listened to the results of "the music business" for thier whole life, I can safely speculate that, more often than not, only really popular music is going to be on those lists. I can also be 100% sure that they'll all be RIAA protected or 'approved".

As someone who's been a musician for more than 4 years, I can safely swear that I would never sign a deal with the RIAA of any kind.

Starbuks sux, real people go to keraboo coffee (i'm not a coffee fan though)

If you can burn it to CD, there IS no drm. End of story.

Oh, lovely.

Starbucks has EIGHT- yes, EIGHT- stores in Redmond, some of them just a block or two away from each other. You can't drive ten blocks without hitting a Starbucks in our town. And they're talking about building a second one- a NINTH Starbucks, a drive thru, not far away from two other Starbucks. Are they nuts, or is Redmond's coffee market simply gigantic? I couldn't tell you. I can tell you, though, I prefer Tully's (not all of you have Tully's in your area. We do. They're Starbucks' main competitor. They only have 2 redmond cafes, though).

:-:~ Phantom

If there's one thing this country needs 8 of within the span of a few blocks... why do people think it is coffee? Why can't we have 8 schools within a square mile? lol..

I'm sure carla60626 will back me up on this: in downtown Chicago, there is a Starbucks practically on EVERY block. And where there's not a Starbucks, a Caribou Coffee is there.

How much latte, double steamed crappuccinos & DRM infected music files does 1 city need?

McDonalds made the same mistake years ago. Expanded to the point their main competitor was themselves. Then they got into a price war, and ended up hiring a consultant who closed a lot of brances down.

Where was I...Randall's, I think, in Friendswood, had a Satbuck's inside. Inside a stinkin' grocery store.

I get whole bean from Central Market and grind my own...Starbuck's can KMA.