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, 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.
There were two versions of the 2006 download promotion, which was only available until December 31, 2006:
Anyone in the U.S. could visit the Best Buy website, join BBDMS if necessary, and qualify to download the 14 tracks in the Sweet Tracks 2006 albumfor free. If an email address was enrolled in any other version of Rhapsody, users had to enroll another email address in BBDMS to download the tracks.
Sweet Tracks 2006 packages, in candy bar-like wrappers, were distributed at Best Buy stores in the U.S. on Black Friday, though some stores still had them for at least a couple weeks thereafter. Inside the package were instructions to go to a slightly different version of the Sweet Tracks page to download the 14 tracks along with 5 bonus tracks, along with a redemption code for the 5 bonus tracks. Though not expressly stated in the package, these customers also had to join BBDMS if necessary; the bonus was a five-download credit for your choice of tracks from BBDMS.
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 "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. 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 membership 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 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 AudioDRM ; 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.
