In preparation for the launch of their upcoming partnership with Apple, Starbucks will be giving away free music downloads from Oct. 2 - Nov. 7. Before you get too excited, no, you can’t wander into a Farbucks with your shiny new iPod Touch and start a downloading frenzy. Employees will be handing out gift cards each day that will allow sippers to download one free song, the song of the day (no, you don’t get to choose) by a Farbucks featured artist.

It’s estimated that the 10,000 US stores will give away 1.5 million songs per day for a total of more than 50 million songs over the course of the promotion. Given that those songs would usually cost a buck per download, someone’s shelling out some serious dough to get people excited.

There’s just one problem with this. The hype is that you can now go into a Starbucks and download music on your wifi equipped iPod. This promotion has nothing to do with that though. We’ve been able to buy music at Starbucks for quite a while now, albeit on CD. Shouldn’t a promotion for a service that’s all about shopping iTunes AT Starbucks encourage people shot shop iTunes…AT Starbucks? I know, call me crazy.

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