Starting October 2nd, Starbucks will promote its new wireless music service in collaboration with Apple by giving away millions of free “song of the day” cards that will be redeemable at iTunes (the company says they’ll pass out 1.5 million cards per day through November 7th, which translates to 50 million free tracks). The first free song will be Bob Dylan’s “Joker Man,” and tunes from Starbucks’ Hear Music artists Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell will follow, as will tracks by Joss Stone, Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Annie Lennox, Band of Horses and more acts. Starbucks will also begin selling iTunes digital release cards, which equal a full album of music downloaded from iTunes. KT Tunstall’s new album Drastic Fantastic, and the Eddie Vedder-penned soundtrack to Into the Wild will be the first two full albums featured in that program. The store’s Wi-Fi music service will begin in New York and Seattle in October and expand to more markets over the next year; 25 percent of Starbucks will feature the service by the end of 2008. The Starbucks music explosion will also include tomorrow’s “Lunch and Listen” event celebrating the release of Joni Mitchell’s Hear Music album Shine. We listened to Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full all day long at Starbucks stores on the day of its release, but Shine will only be played from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and will be supplemented by additional songs from Mitchell’s extensive back catalog.

And Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has a few words for anyone who thinks distributing music via Starbucks is lame: “There’s no difference between working with Starbucks and working with record labels like Universal and Geffen. It’s a knee-jerk reaction from PC watchdogs. I mean, really, which long-distance company do you use for your cellphone? Are you on the grid? If you’re off the grid, I’ll listen to you.”

In related digital news, Virgin has closed Virgin Digital, its Windows-based alternative to iTunes. The store will officially stop selling downloads on Friday, but will remain open so that customers can back up their songs until Friday, October 19th. Virgin has offered “apologies for any inconvenience this might cause” but no reason for the shutdown. Napster will scoop up Virgin’s customers by honoring Virgin Digital pre-pay cards and vouchers.