The Surprisingly Complicated Story Behind Starbucks' "Pick of the Week" Promotion

When I was first adopted, my mother quit her teaching job and started working at Starbucks so she could spend more time with us.

I don’t really know what it was like putting a career you worked hard for on hold, to adopt three children in exchange for a food service job.

But the effort to help us integrate into the family more smoothly was there. And I still have pretty fond memories of those early days, even if we’re not on speaking terms anymore.

At the time, Starbucks was known for a few things;

– Reloadable gift cards you could register for a lifetime membership that got you a free drink on your birthday every year and access to the points program.

– Surprisingly tasty baked goods and breakfast sandwiches.

– Fair trade coffee.

– Tazo tea tins, drinks and bags.

– Baristas that handwrote your name on your cup. (With more or less success).

– Collectible coffee mugs that were different for every city you visited, but all looked like they belonged together in the kitchen cupboard.

– Rotating, elaborate seasonal drinks.

– Employee health benefits, stock options and higher pay than other fast-food jobs at the time.

– And, my personal favorite. Free downloadable iTunes music codes available at the register.

Some of these things have changed dramatically, including recent concerns regarding Starbuck’s modern labour practices.

While other things have stayed relatively the same, with Starbucks expanding merchandising to include “drops” like the chaotic November 2025 limited-edition “Bearista” glass cup fiasco.

But as a young tween waiting for my mom to get off of work, Starbucks was actually pretty cool.

What Was Starbucks Like In the Early 2000s?

The atmosphere was generally, fast-casual and one of two things.

Extremely busy and claustrophobic with people waiting in long lines for their drinks while conversations bounced off the small shop walls at an ear-splitting volume.

Or quiet, mostly empty tables and a few people working away on their laptops.

When I was in middle school, I’d sit at one of the corner tables and stare at the wall art—blown up photos of tanned farmers lovingly cradling green coffee beans and elaborate, eye catching murals.

And often found myself wondering how they made all the bag art for the different coffee blends while I waited for my mother.

When I got into high school, if it was quiet, I’d read a book or write while listening to my iPod because I’d had my own membership card for a couple years at that point.

But no matter what age I was, I always looked for the “Pick of the Week” download cards.

I haven’t been in a Starbucks for over a decade now. But I stopped in one recently while I was visiting some family. And woke up Tuesday morning with a funny thought.

How exactly did those little download cards get there?

But to figure that out, I think it’s important to explain what the program actually was.

What Was the Starbucks "Pick of the Week" Program?

The Starbucks “Pick of the Week” was a popular cross-promotion program between Starbucks, iBooks and the Apple Itunes Store that offered customers complimentary, in-store digital download codes.

When the program was first implemented in 2006 these downloads were made available through physical cards picked up in store. And later, in 2013, directly via the Starbucks app before being phased out altogether in 2015.

The physical promo cards themselves were pretty simple but effective— business card-sized pieces of stiff cardstock left stacked next to the till— near the gift cards or tucked into a container by the stir sticks.

Each card featured;

– an eye catching picture of the album, artist, book or app icon.

– A track title and artist name for the free song downloads.

– A book title and author name for iBooks.

– An app name and a short tagline for app downloads.

And, when you took the card and flipped it over, there was a 16-digit redemption code with an expiry date and instructions on how to download the song for free on iTunes.

I always made sure to enter my download codes onto my iPod Classic as soon as I got home so they wouldn’t expire. Which as an adult I’m realizing is a marketing tactic.

But I was also, not the only person waiting around in coffee shops for a passionfruit lemonade or a peppermint mocha, staring intently at the stir sticks.

Apparently Apple executives do it too.

An Age Old Strategy With New Tech

According to a couple different sources, the seed for the collab idea likely came from Matt Fisher, the former global marketing and partnership lead for iTunes, while he was grabbing coffee with Steve Jobs.

Apple Corporate campuses have their own dedicated cafeterias refered to as Caffe Macs. And they are *very* exclusive.

I guess, while waiting for their coffee at the Infinite Loop 4, Cupertino location, Matt Fischer realized the 3-5 minute window customers stand around waiting for a coffee order – was the same amount of time it takes to download a song or an app over in-store Wi-Fi.

Now, the concept of using the time between purchasing and receiving something isn’t exactly new.

Procter & Gamble originally coined “First Moment of Truth” in 2005 to describe the critical 3 to 7 seconds when a consumer encounters a product on a store shelf and makes the final decision to buy it over a competitor.

Google leans on the “Zero Moment of Truth.” A marketing concept that describes the crucial online research phase a consumer undergoes after being exposed to an ad but before making an actual purchase.

And retailers have been exploiting this gap to sell you chocolate bars and other impulse buys at the till since…well as long as general stored have been around.

But connecting first principles to overlooked moments and new technologies is an age old innovation strategy. And one that seems to have worked out very well for Apple.

Half their brand is just, “make stuff people like using”. But boy does it work.

Still, a good idea like “people could download an app right now”, isn’t enough to make a successful promotion on its own.

You still need “stuff” people actually want to download. Which is why part of the magic might have also been the exposure and frequency of new artists to pick from during the promotion.

Why the Pick of the Week Changed Every Tuesday

Each Tuesday, the store stocked a new design. So, even if you didn’t like the artist, app or book this week there was always a little bit of an incentive to pop by later to see what was new.

And it worked. I never turned down an opportunity to go to Starbucks even when it was loud because I knew I might get a new song to look forward to.

Which is exactly the kind of weekly, ritualistic shopping incentive marketing and sales people dream about.

Sometimes, I’d wonder how they got all these different artists to give away so much music for free. And would usually go out of my way to buy something because I felt a little guilty about it.

As a kid, I had no idea that the actual catalogue and industry connections required to make this happen had already been acquired almost 8 years ago.

And Starbucks wasn’t really paying for each download individually. The mechanics were actually a little more complicated than that.

A Vehicle for Promoting Starbucks-backed Artists, Albums and Playlists

From the very start the “Song of the Day / Pick of the Week” promotion was also a vehicle for highlighted early signings to the Starbucks Hear Music label.

The partnership, between Starbucks and Concord Music Group, included big names like Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell, alongside other popular acts like Dave Matthews, John Mayer, and Joss Stone.

But the label itself actually began as a catalog company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990 before being purchased by Starbucks in 1999.

Up until 2007, Starbucks had been innovating with the label.

Mostly curated playlists for their in-store experience, CD sales and a standalone chain of Hear Music stores that had been converted into a hybrid record shop and coffee bar experience.

Patrons at these Hear Music stores could use digital kiosks and tablet computers to browse a database of over 150,000 tracks and burn personalized CDs from their catalogues.

Which sounds kind of awesome. At the time I was buying CDs for a dollar at my local thrift shop. And most of them were kind of terrible.

But by then, CDs had been on their way out for a while and a lot of corporations were looking to jump ship.

The Death of the Starbucks CD

Hear Music CDs were available at hybrid Chapters-Starbucks locations across Canada. Usually at the till.

And I may actually own a few.

But in October of 2006, Starbucks, as Hear Music struck a deal with the iTunes store that would dramatically change the direction of the label and eventually contribute to CDs being phased out altogether.

The deal was pretty win-win for both brands.

iTunes would get access to Hear Music’s extensive catalogue. And Starbucks would get a dedicated “Entertainment Area” on the app putting their CDs, co-produced albums and currated playlists in front of even more listeners.

In July 2007, Starbucks announced Hear Music was shutting down as a proprietary brand.

And by November of the same year the standalone Hear Music stores—including locations in Santa Monica and Bellevue—either closed down or were converted into standard Starbucks locations.

But the label continued to exist. And the “Pick of the Day” promotion was just getting started. Because suddenly, Starbucks was digital native.

Timing and PR Strategy

Initially, “Pick of the Week” was a “Song of the Day” pilot, launched October 2, 2007, that featured Bob Dylan’s “Joker Man” as one of its first free downloads.

The month long promotion was initally a limited-time event set to run until November 7, 2007.

At the time, press releases largely described it as an unprecedented partnership to give away 50 million free digital songs from 37 different artists.

But the sub-purpose, to promote the newly launched “iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store” now available at select Starbucks locations was likely, the more important detail.

Innovation for the Smartphone Era And the Technology That Made It Possible

The “Apple iTunes Music Store” service underpinning the promotion featured several defining elements:

"Now Playing" Integration

When connected to the in-store network, users could view the name and artist of the song currently playing over the Starbucks sound system, as well as a list of the last 10 songs played in the cafe.

Then, instantly purchase them from the iTunes store for the standard 99 cents.

FREE Internet Access

Normally, accessing the internet at Starbucks required paying for a T-Mobile hotspot. Through this partnership, the Wi-Fi landing page permitted direct access exclusively to the iTunes store for free.

Scroll addicts hadn’t been invented yet because the iPhone had only just been released four months ago on June 29th of 2007.

But this was a huge upgrade from playing BrickBreaker on your Blackberry with a tracker ball. And likely, the start of our long-time phone addictions.

Automatic Discovery

Participating Starbucks stores used a local Wi-Fi network to automatically detect nearby iPhones and iPod touch devices, causing them to light up. The Starbucks icon would then appear on screen notifying customers that the in-store music service was available, without a hotspot login or a connection fee.

For the time, it was groundbreaking.

The Starbucks “iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store” was the first mainstream service to offer location-based, one-click music purchasing without paid hotspot logins.

It coincided with one of the most monumental tech launches of the decade. And the seamless user experience had completely eliminated the need for Hear Music’s physical listening kiosks.

But it wasn’t just the groundbreaking tech that seemed to have captured everyone’s attention.

The cultural math made sense, too.

Because if there was one person who was going to revolutionize the in-store coffee shop experience using a wi-fi hotspot, a couple of iPods and some digital download codes, I’d bet on Steve Jobs.

The Right Hype Man for the Job

When Steve Jobs announced the Apple and Starbucks iTunes collaboration on September 5, 2007. He pitched it in typical Steve Jobs fashion:

“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.”

But the relationship required to get this launch off the ground was likely established much earlier.

It seems like Jobs and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz had a fairly amicable business relationship.

Jobs recognized Starbucks as “an incredible phenomenon in our culture” and an opportunity to pair the coffee chain’s massive physical footprint with Apple’s digital music store.

While Schultz had benefitted in the past from Jobs no-nonsense advice on centering the customer experience.

From research, it seems like Jobs was most likely the guiding force behind ensuring the wi-fi service for the Apple iTunes Music Store experience was free for Starbucks customers.

And Jobs was also right to bet on this particular brand partnership.

The launch began in more than 600 stores in New York and Seattle on October 2, 2007, before successfully expanding to thousands of company-owned locations.

In fact, the pilot was so well-loved, Starbucks decided to bring it back starting April of 2008 with one specific change.

The resource demand from the original pilot prompted Starbucks to shift song giveaways to a weekly schedule instead of a daily one and re-introduce it as the “Pick of the Week” program.

This switch allowed executives to reduce printing costs for redemption cards, lightened the load on baristas, and eventually—diversify the content they could offer.

How Apple iTunes and Starbucks Entertainment Chose Featured Apps and Artists

A key element of the promotion’s continued success hinged on making good weekly picks.

Both brands likely recognized this, which is why the actual curration seems to have been a joint effort between the Starbucks Entertainment team alongside Apple’s iTunes marketing and partnership executives.

The Starbucks team used in-house experts to currate a mix of established legends and emerging artists on the music side of things.

Then, in August of 2011, the program was expanded to include apps, TV shows, and e-book samples.

A key element of the promotion’s continued success hinged on making good weekly picks.

The Starbucks team used in-house experts to currate a mix of established legends and emerging artists on the music side of things.

Then, in August of 2011, the program was expanded to include apps, TV shows, and e-book samples.

At this point, Apple used dedicated marketers to vet applications made by developers who wanted to join the partner program and potentially be featured as a “Pick of the Week.”

As sort of a neat tidbit. Shazam Encore was the first application featured during this 2011 expansion.

Shazam itself had been in development since 2002 and actually predated the iPhone.

In some ways, it arguably offered a similar or even competing vision to the Starbucks Apple collab. And would eventually be bought out by Apple in 2018 for 400 million dollars.

But before it was integrated into the Apple ecosystem, it was an SMS service first. And then a mobile phone application.

A Launch Pad for Early Mobile Developers

Being picked for the program seems to have been a dream come true for many devs at the time.

The perks were considerable;

– Your app featured in over 700 different Starbucks locations.

– Millions of “Pick of the Week” cards printed.

– A featured spot in the Starbucks “Entertainment Area”.

– A forecasted redemption rate above 3%.

– And an opportunity to earn money once users downloaded the app via paid tiers or in-app content.

How Free Wi-Fi Eventually Made the Promotion Obsolete

Around 2010 Starbucks rolled out its “one click Wi-fi” policy change across the US and Canada.

Which was a big enough deal for Eater to make a post about it, apparently. But it wasn’t necessarily a surprise.

As smartphones evolved, unrestricted free Wi-Fi had became the standard at coffee shops.

Which may have also been the beginning of the end for specialized store-to-device networks like the iTunes store.

Users weren’t locked in anymore.

The Streaming Era Puts an End to Digital Download Culture

Starbucks eventually began gently transitioning from physical in-store promo codes to digital in-app downloads on April 9, 2013.

The physical cards continued temporarily for a little bit, but the main purpose was to integrate the giveaway into the Starbucks App for iPhone that had been slowly adding new features since its original launch in 2009.

The app had already been a massive investment for the company, with Starbucks spending approximately $25 million on Square mobile payment technology integration in 2012.

But was also proving to be a significant revenue driver for the brand.

And now, users could claim their free digital downloads with one click in-app, successfully encouraging many to join the platform.

By February of 2015, Starbucks officially stopped selling all physical CDs in its coffee shops and also discontinued it’s “Pick of the Week” program as streaming dominance took over.

Instead, shifting its music strategy to digital curation and a new audio partnership with Spotify.

Conclusion

Looking back, there were;

– complex corporate partnership agreements

– a million dollar IP catalogue on the line

– licensing deals

– developers

– marketing teams

– a 2008 recession

And one of the biggest product launches of the decade—all shaping the outcome of this deceptively simple Starbucks promotion.

But from my perspective as a kid, I didn’t see it as an elaborate marketing strategy to integrate the iPhone into everyday life while promoting a music label in the middle of a pivot to digital native.

It was just one more really cool thing about Starbucks and iTunes.

I haven’t been in a Starbucks in years. And I’m now a certified Apple hater. But I think I’m still nostalgic for that version of both brands because my childhood wasn’t just built by my parents.

It was built by marketing decisions, motivated by loyalty programs, and shaped by carefully currated retail environments.

So, it’s kind of illuminating to see how those choices, made by two American megacorporations in Seattle and Cupertino, filtered all the way down to my small Alberta town until eventually, the architecture became invisible.

Because when technology works really, really well—you don’t normally notice the mechanisms behind it until decades later, if at all.

But I definitely remember those free little download cards and the way Starbucks used to feel.

Maybe you do too.

Tags: Advertising, Brand Identity and Visual Storytelling, Corporate Brand Strategy, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Fast Food Culture, Food Industry Trends, Food/Beverage, Ideas, Internet Culture, Marketing, Retail Strategy, Retro/Nostalgic Design, Technology

The Surprisingly Complicated Story Behind Starbucks’ “Pick of the Week” Promotion