If the iPhone price drop was the most shocking bit of news announced at last month’s Apple press event, the company’s partnership with Starbucks to bring the iTunes WiFi Store to coffee shops around the world was the strangest. Digital music and Grande Mochalattes? Hey, it could work. Especially since Starbucks has announced that it will give away 50 million songs starting today, as a means for introducing their customers to the new service. Speaking of the store, it goes live today, so folks in New York City and Seattle can now head on down to one of 600 Starbucks locations for their Java and iTunes fix. For the rest of us, the service should become as ubiquitous as Starbucks itself by the end of 2008.

For more
– see this Gizmodo story on the launch event
– and watch this video hands-on