Starting October 2nd, over 7,000 Starbucks locations will be giving away 50 million free digital songs in an effort to jump-start its new deal with Apple’s iTunes.

Earlier this month, Apple and Starbucks announced a partnership that would allow visitors to the largest coffee-house company in the world to wirelessly browse, search for, preview, and buy digital music from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store.

The service, said to work on an iPod touch, iPhone, or PC/MAC with iTunes software, will be automatically detected by the device when a customer enters a participating Starbucks location and will be available with no connection fee or hotspot login.

“Getting free access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store and the ‘Now Playing’ service at Starbucks is a great way for customers to discover new music,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Imagine walking into a participating Starbucks, hearing a great song, and being able to instantly download it onto your iPod or iPhone. We think this is very cool.”

Apple and Starbucks have made this process much easier with their Now Playing service, which allows your device to display the artist and song name of the music that is playing in the coffee-house.

According to the Associated Press, Seattle, Starbucks’ baristas will be handing out 1.5 million “Song of the Day” cards each day from the period starting October 2nd to November 7. These cards, redeemable at Apple’s online iTunes store, will allow the customer to download a specific song from one of 37 different artists such as Dave Matthews, John Mayer, and Bob Dylan.

We’re not sure if a free song justifies paying so much for a decaf triple grande no whip mocha, but it’s certainly better than a kick in the pants. The service will make its debut at more than 600 Starbucks company-operated locations in New York and Seattle on October 2.

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Entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 7:39 pm under Apple.

Read more entries by George Gardner.
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