NEWS Starbucks is expanding its digital music service to coffee shops in Seattle and Austin, Texas, this month.
The service, called the Hear Media music bar, will be available at 15 Starbucks stores in Seattle starting on Monday. It will debut in another 30 coffee shops in Austin on 25 October, the company said. The coffee shop giant opened its first store with the service in March in Santa Monica, California.
The service is designed to let customers burn custom music compilations onto a CD, selecting songs from Hear Music's digital library of about 150,000 songs. Consumers can browse the catalogue with a stylus pen on a touch screen and listen to songs and albums before purchasing. The first seven songs cost $8.99. Each additional song costs 99 cents.
Starbucks acquired digital music maker Hear Music in 1999.
As expected, customers will use equipment from HP, such as Tablet PCs, to access the service.
Both HP and Starbucks have turned to digital music in varying degrees as a way to complement their traditional businesses. Starbucks and Wi-Fi partner T-Mobile USA offer music downloads over a wireless network. And HP, which has been making a broad expansion into consumer electronics, has teamed up with Apple to resell iPod portable digital audio players.
Dinesh C. Sharma writes for CNET News.com
