Starbucks & Spotify Team Up In Streaming Music Deal

(Renee Rendler-Kaplan)

Just two months after Starbucks stopped selling CDs in its stores, the coffee chain says it’s going to be filling customers’ ears with music another way, announcing a streaming partnership with Spotify that will let customers have a say in what’s being played.

On Monday Starbucks announced a multi-year deal to work with Spotify to make playlists for its stores and promote the subscription streaming service at those locations.

“By connecting Spotify’s world-class streaming platform into our world-class store and digital ecosystem, we are reinventing the way our millions of global customers discover music,” Howard Schultz, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

Starting this fall, Starbucks employees and customers will be able to pick what songs are played in stores. Spotify will also be incorporating into the Starbucks mobile app. Spotify customers will also be able to collect Starbucks’ rewards points as part of the deal, which is the first time the company has allowed a third party to access its program.

About 150,000 Starbucks workers will also get free access to Spotify’s premium service starting this summer, which usually costs about $10 a month.

“We’re really making the barista the D.J. here,” Daniel Ek, chief executive of Spotify, said in a conference call according to the New York Times.

Which could be bad for you if you already know and loathe your baristas’ taste in music based on the playlists they might already have going now. Better pack earplugs, in that case.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist