Online Media Cultist

Call me crazy (and people do!) but there’s something that happens when you hang out at a Starbucks. Not so much when you just run in to grab a mountain of caffeination before work or a roadie, but I’m talking about those times when you happen to on an outing with friends, drinking coffee (I go for the old fashioned coffee-and-milk, nothing fancy for me, thanks), doing work, and so on.

The music sounds good, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s the caffeine – which I swear Starbucks doles out in crack-like addictive quantities – but I personally start to get down with stuff I would never listen to ordinarily. Sometimes I need to shake myself out of it with a shudder… Dave Matthews, no!

And I’ve had conversations with friends about whether or not purchasing music at a Starbucks (we’ve all seen those little displays at the register) constitutes some form of “selling out,” whatever that means.

This is all to say that Starbucks does a fantastic job of piping a secondary offering (music) to its in-store customers.

Further, I think it’s a pretty great idea that Starbucks has teamed with iTunes to give away 1.5 million “Song of the Day” cards that are redeemable at the iTunes store. This all ties into a third thing that people like to do in Starbucks: hop on the WiFi and play with the Interwebs.

If you’re on a computer in a Starbucks with a coupon for a free download of a song you’re digging at that very moment that’s playing on the overhead speakers, you’re in a prime position to be motivated to redeem it. And then it’s all too easy (read = addictive, I’ve been there!) to take the next step to start clicking the “purchase” button and start jamming down $.99 downloads over the high-speed pipes.

I’d be surprised if this program isn’t highly successful, and I think that we’re going to see much more of this kind of online-offline interaction in the future.