Starbucks Ditches CDs, Teams Up With Spotify To Create 'Music Ecosystems'

The selection of hipster CDs for purchase at the front of the line at Starbucks are almost as famous as the coffee drinks themselves. Well, not quite, but for the longest time they've been part of the coffee giant's image as a true coffeehouse. Well, Starbucks is finally ditching the twentieth century technology and going digital. Starbucks announced a partnership with Spotify to create what they are calling a "music ecosystem."

In this program, Starbucks baristas will each get a Spotify premium account to create playlists that fit the mood of the store. Starbucks will also create its own playlists and make them available for streaming on Spotify, highlighting the most popular tunes played in Starbucks stores over the past couple of decades. Starbucks customers will even be able to suggest songs to play in Starbucks to the caffeine-doling DJ.

"Throughout its history, Starbucks has worked closely with the music industry, offering a variety of artists a platform for their work," Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, said in a statement. "By connecting Spotify's world-class streaming platform into our world-class store and digital ecosystem, we are reinventing the way our millions of global customers discover music."

Spotify users will also be able to participate in Starbucks' loyalty reward programs directly from the music streaming app.