Starbucks to give away music as new service starts

The Starbucks logo is seen outside a coffee-shop in New York's Times Square March 15, 2007.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp said on Monday it will give away millions of songs via downloads starting next month as it launches a wireless music service with Apple Inc.

From Oct. 2 to Nov. 7 at more than 10,000 U.S. Starbucks locations, customers can receive "Song of the Day" cards redeemable on Apple's iTunes store for a complimentary song hand-selected by Starbucks Entertainment, the company said.

Starbucks said it will give away 1.5 million downloads per day for a total of more than 50 million free songs. Customers will have until the end of the year to redeem the song on iTunes.

Earlier this month, Apple and Starbucks said they had reached a deal to allow people to buy songs wirelessly from Apple's iTunes music store in Starbucks coffee shops without paying WiFi connection fees.

The service is to debut at more than 600 Starbucks stores in New York and Seattle on Oct. 2, and will be expanded to other major U.S. cities later this year and next.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf)