Spotify and Starbucks launch a new in-store ‘digital music experience’ in the U.S.

Spotify and Starbucks are teaming up to launch a “new digital music experience” in thousands of coffee shops across the U.S.

As was first announced last May, visitors to Starbucks’ more than 7,500 outlets across the U.S. will be able to identify music playing in-store through the Starbucks Mobile app and open the song directly within Spotify.

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The fruits of the new Starbucks-Spotify partnership will be available to Starbucks’ mobile app users on both Android and iOS. Customers will not only get real-time information about songs that are playing, they will also be able to view recently played songs and save the ones they like best to a personal playlist on Spotify.

Starbucks will also serve up the most popular music from over 20 years of in-store playlists, and customers will be able to influence future playlists by actively choosing to “Love” a song that they hear.

Kicking off this month, Starbucks will also highlight new and established artists and issue curated playlists within the main Starbucks app, which can be opened in Spotify.

“Music has played a pivotal role in our stores for over forty years, and we have been at the forefront of how to integrate it into a retail environment,” said Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, in a press release. “Today is the next era in that experience. We are merging the physical and digital, providing new access points for Spotify as they continue to grow globally, placing more control into our customers’ hands and giving artists the world’s largest stage for them to share their talent.”

Of course, to take advantage of this offering, customers must have the Spotify app installed on their devices. However, while Spotify typically makes new functionality such as this only available to subscribers of its $10 monthly service, the music-streaming titan is opening the Starbucks’ features to everyone, even those on its free ad-supported plan. With competitors such as Apple Music making headway, Spotify clearly wants to get as many people using its service as possible, after which it undoubtedly hopes to lure them over to the paid plan.