Ever hear a song while waiting in line for your latte and think, “I wish I knew what that song was?" Well, now a new service in Starbucks stores lets you name that tune and save it to your phone too.
The coffee giant is expanding its relationship with the streaming service Spotify to launch a new digital music experience that will allow Starbucks customers to identify music being played overhead in stores, then save the tunes they like to a playlist on Spotify’s app.
The feature goes live today at more than 7,500 Starbucks stores around the U.S., where it will be available to 10 million My Starbucks Rewards loyalty members, as well as Spotify’s U.S. users.
Customers will need to enable location services under their phone's privacy settings to make the service work. Then all they have to is open the Starbucks App and they'll see what songs are playing in their store.
Aimed at boosting both Starbucks Mobile App usage and sign-ups for Spotify’s music service, the new feature will highlight new artists, albums and curated Starbucks playlists spanning a diversity of musical genres and geographies — much like the company did in the '90s with its original CDs.
“Music has played a pivotal role in our stores for over forty years,” said Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks. “Today is the next era in that experience. We are merging the physical and digital.”
The new Starbucks music platform is available to both iPhone and Android users within the Starbucks Mobile App. Spotify users can also find new playlists from Starbucks. These features are accessible on Spotify’s Free and Premium services.
While Spotify typically makes new features like this available only to subscribers, who pay $10 a month, the music-streaming titan is opening the Starbucks features to users on its free, ad-supported plan, as well. For now.