In case you haven’t gone into a Starbucks [SBUX] store lately, there’s been a change to the look of the joint media offering card format.

First observed iOS app in the wild: Shazam Encore

Hi, intrepid Starbucks [SBUX] iTunes promotion fans:

It’s been a loooong time since we discussed the favorably fun Starbucks iTunes weekly offerings, that have morphed from a simple joint experimental item between Starbucks and Apple [AAPL] into a lucrative people-attracting feature in so many Starbucks outlets worldwide.

So, here’s a new, welcome twist on the campaign: offering iOS applications! So, it beefs up the possible weekly options, from single iTunes music tracks, to individual videos, to entire digital albums and compilations, to now… applications!

And it looks like, to kick it off, there’s the big brother to the popular free Shazam, known as Shazam Encore.

It's the Fab Four (photo from Apple.com site's front page, 11/16/2010)

Whoa.

If you’ve been wondering what that cryptic banner on Apple.com has been. Well, now you know…

After so many years, and a lot of negotiations, Apple [AAPL] has finally secured the distribution rights to the Beatles’ music on the iTunes music store.

While there are still quite a few holdouts, getting the Beatles catalog on iTunes is a huge win for the company, especially as the winter holiday season gets revved up.

The answer to that question, “Will the Starbucks iTunes cards be discontinued?“:

No.

According to Starbucks [SBUX], the online Starbucks iTunes code redemption mechanism is in addition to the traditional physical card offering that has graced Starbucks outlets for the past few years.

However, for folks who have historically had difficulty getting the Starbucks iTunes cards in a timely fashion because of stocking problems at their Starbucks stores, this is an attractive alternative.

If you have been a frequent Wi-Fi user at Starbucks [SBUX] and also a fan of the Starbucks-iTunes free media (music and videos) card promotion, you may have noticed that some stores have had recent troubles in keeping the physical cards in stock or, even worse, up-to-date.

How are you going to keep abreast of the Starbucks-iTunes free music and videos?

Fortunately, Starbucks’ online operations may be able to help: if you check their Wi-Fi portal (which often comes up whenever you try to sign into a store’s Wi-Fi hotspot), you may notice the following:

Have you seen this featurebox on Starbucks' Wi-Fi portal?

But, of course, this also raises the question: what are the faithful card collectors going to do, once their outlet of these physical collectibles dry up?

Apple’s [AAPL] iPhone OS 3.0, shipping on the new iPhone 3G S devices, is also available today as software upgrades for the iPhone and iPod touch devices.

Have you seen this error dialog lately?

A lot of people are unfortunately reporting a lot of errors when trying to fetch their upgrades via iTunes, getting that less-than-helpful error dialog. The (somewhat) good news is that if you get one of these (or something that looks similar to it), you can try again in a few minutes, and hopefully your subsequent request will get past the massive demand for the software upgrade (and all of the other traffic going through iTunes) so that you can download your copy.

Good luck, folks!

I noticed today, when I was updating several of the apps for my iPod touch, that the iTunes licensing terms had changed. While most of the verbiage is essentially comparable to what was presented on the previous TOS, the big change involves the statement that the paid HD content from the iTunes Store is only allowable for display on Macs or Windows PCs with the iTunes client, or TVs fed by Apple TV devices.

So: How many people are impacted by this change in TOS?

As several of you know, we were following the Starbucks [SBUX] iTunes Pick of the Week hiccup over Dido’s “Quiet Times” song.

It seems that now even the Sony [SNE] Music Dido site has picked up on the story, announcing that the Pick of the Week for the “Quiet Times” song is available. Which is good, but I hope that music lovers do not stay restricted to only this week’s selection…

N.B.

Other related Javamancy posts (in reverse chronological order):

• Switcherback on Dido Song
• Starting 2009’s Starbucks Picks List
• Switcheroo on Dido Song

As I was traveling around among the several Starbucks outlets in my area, I picked up another Dido Pick of the Week card to see if the SKU-to-code association in the iTunes database had been fixed yet.

And, lo and behold, yes… or is it?

There are two possibilities here:

1. All of the redemption codes (on the backs of the Pick of the Week cards) have been pointed to the correct SKU for Dido’s “Quiet Times”– which I think is a great song.
2. Some of the redemption codes were pointing to “Quiet Times” and others were referencing “Us 2 Little Gods” (which is also a great song).

Whatever the case may be, it’s still a free download for quality music, folks.

Here’s the start of the 2009 Starbucks-iTunes Picks of the Week list of cards that I’ve accumulated thus far.

As many of you already know, I’ve been tracking and collecting the iTunes freebies that are offered periodically at Starbucks [SBUX] outlets. Without further ado, here’s my new list for 2009 list… presented in order of chronological release (hopefully in the correct order):

1. 01/06/2009 – Blind Pilot, “One Red Thread”
2. 01/13/2009 – Joshua Radin, “One of Those Days”
3. 01/20/2009 – Jennifer O’Connor, “Always In Your Mind”
4. 01/27/2009 – Emiliana Torrini, “Big Jumps”
5. 02/03/2009 – Lisa Hannigan, “I Don’t Know”
6. 02/10/2009 – Travis, “Last Words”
7. 02/17/2009 – Greg Laswell, “How the Day Sounds”
8. 02/24/2009 – Brett Dennen, “San Francisco”
9. 03/03/2009 – Neko Case, “People Got A Lotta Nerve”
10. 03/10/2009 – Dido, “Quiet Times” (but not really…) (UPDATE: but maybe for real…)

As more continue to appear each week, I’ll continue to snag ‘em. And even keep ya posted…  

N.B.

For those of you just joining us here and are unfamiliar with this topic, or if you’d like to see all of the activity from last year, you can “catch up” quickly with these (which are presented in reverse chronological order, to further shake you up):

• Wrapping Up 2008’s Starbucks Picks List
• Steve’s Starbucks Picks List: Redux
• Steve’s Starbucks Picks List
• Mr. Heringer, I Presume
• Follow-Up to Starbucks iTunes Song of the Day
• Starbucks iTunes Pick of the Week

There were also earlier posts this year about related Starbucks items (also presented in reverse chronological order):

• Switcheroo on Dido Song
• (STARBUCKS)RED Card Debuts