Sweet Tracks is a series of Christmas music albums issued by Best Buy in the United States, originally on CD from 2003 to 2005, but changed to digital downloads in 2006.
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The series was originally intended as a bonus for members of Reward Zone, Best Buy's loyalty program which was also introduced in 2003. Since at that time customers had to pay $9.95 per year to enroll in the Reward Zone program (though the company did grant free renewals to some customers), it was apparently intended as a "Christmas gift" to offset the cost of membership.
The end of the CD series appears to have been the result of changes to the Reward Zone program which eliminated the annual fee; these changes were tested in Ohio in 2005, then rolled out nationwide in 2006. It is unclear if or how the 2005 CD was distributed in Ohio.
The original Sweet Tracks CDs were notable in that they were issued in metal tins resembling a large mint. They also contained several recordings that were generally not available on other albums in the U.S.
For 2006, Best Buy restructured the Sweet Tracks series into a promotion for the Best Buy Digital Music Store (BBDMS), Best Buy's rebranded version of the Rhapsody online music service.
There were two versions of the 2006 download promotion, which was only available until December 31, 2006:
The 14 tracks of the Sweet Tracks 2006 album were not clearly available for download from BBDMS until mid-December, though Best Buy continued to advertise the promotion online and in stores; email correspondence with Rhapsody technical support on December 5 confirmed that "(a)ll customer's attempting to download these tracks are experiencing the same download issue." Nonetheless, the complete album was available within BBDMS by searching for the album title "Sweet Tracks", then clicking on the appropriate "Buy" button. The initial problem appeared to involve a bad link from the Best Buy website.
If a user found the Sweet Tracks album page but still find all the "Buy" buttons greyed out, he or she was likely enrolled in a non-BBDMS version of Rhapsody; only BBDMS enrollees were authorized to download the album. (Some may not have been aware of their prior Rhapsody enrollment if they once enrolled in the "Rhapsody 25" plan but later uninstalled Rhapsody without cancelling their enrollment.) This was confirmed in email correspondence with Rhapsody technical support on December 21, 2006, which stated: "Under the email address (...) I show you have a Real Rhapsody memberhsip which would not entitle you to the Sweet Tracks promotion and would cause the tracks to be grayed out. If you have a Best Buy Digital Music membership under a different email address please sign into Rhapsody using that email address instead." A new BBDMS registration from a different email address enabled the "Buy" buttons.
The 5 bonus tracks were redeemable by entering the redemption code into the BBDMS account to obtain the five-download credit. Unlike the Sweet Tracks themselves, they could be redeemed from the beginning, and can be redeemed by non-BBDMS Rhapsody users as well.
Since the 14 album tracks (as well as the five free downloads) are distributed thru Rhapsody as "purchased" downloads, they are all RAX-format files encoded with Helix DRM. Like all other RAX files, the Rhapsody software can burn them to CD, or transfer them to any MP3 player that supports purchased Windows Media Audio DRM (including most current non-Apple players); its Harmony plug-in may also be able to transfer them to an iPod, depending on the current status of the plug-in and your iPod firmware. (Apple occasionally modifies iPod firmware to block Harmony; RealNetworks then tries to modify Harmony in response.)
According to an email a fan received on November 13th 2007 from Gary Arnold; Best Buy senior VP of entertainment, Best Buy will not be offering a Sweet Tracks promotion in the 2007 holiday season. He remarked, "We had a number of other exclusives which took up our time to do Sweet Tracks" (for this year). He carefully mentioned that this doesn't mean that Best Buy won't partake in a Sweet Tracks album offer in the future.
Once again Gary Arnold; Best Buy senior VP of entertainment was contacted with inquiry of a 2008 Sweet Tracks promotion and his answer was the same as in 2007 -- there would be none in 2008.