Starbucks - Your Next Music Superstore?

prostoalex writes "The Fast Company magazine looks into the next horizon in music retailing - allowing customers to choose the songs they like in relaxed environment and burning custom CDs from digital copies of the content. The claimed innovator in the field is none other than Seattle-based Starbucks: 'This August, Starbucks will install individual music-listening stations, with CD-burning capabilities, in 10 existing Starbucks locations in Seattle. From there, the concept rolls out to Texas in the fall, including Starbucks stores in the music mecca of Austin. With the help of technology partner Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks plans to have 100 coffee shops across the country enabled with Hear Music CD-burning stations by next Christmas, and more than 1,000 locations up and running by the end of 2005.' And what's wrong with traditional music outlets? 'Schultz and MacKinnon came to believe that the core Starbucks customer, an affluent 25- to 50-year-old who's likelier to be tuned in to NPR than to MTV or one of the nine gazillion radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., probably feels ignored by the music industry.'"

Ignored by the Music Industry?

[gellenburg]

'Schultz and MacKinnon came to believe that the core Starbucks customer, an affluent 25- to 50-year-old who's likelier to be tuned in to NPR than to MTV or one of the nine gazillion radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., probably feels ignored by the music industry.'

I tend to agree with them. This affluent 25- to 50-year-old (32, actually), pretty much only listens to NPR, but they're missing one important fact in their equation...

They're assuming I either already, or probably will, visit StarBucks.

(I've only been to Starbucks twice in my life, and the second time was to give them a 2nd chance. Needless to say: their coffee sucks, costs way too much, and I can brew a better tasting pot for myself right at home.)

Yes, I'm ignored by the Music Industry, but I've found the iTunes [itunes.com] Music Store, and AllOfMP3 [allofmp3.com] to be viable, and more preferable, alternatives.

Re:starbucks

[angrykeyboarder]

Reasonable prices? A $4.00 cup of coffee is reasonable? LMAO

Don't get me wrong, I often stop by for a Vite Mocha. And sometimes feel like a sucker, But hey I like the stuff!

In a way, they already have...

[cr0sh]

...just not with Borders.

Most Barnes and Noble bookstore/dvd/music store mish-mash have a "B&N Cafe" - everything looks like "Starbucks" - but no logos anywhere. The truth is, they are Starbucks, they use Starbucks coffee, etc - they just don't show the brand name anywhere...

I tend to wonder if they are the "generic" form of Starbucks (same as how some store brands are actually name-brand products produced for the store, and sold for less than the name-brand, but otherwise identical)...

I tried the store in Santa Monica

[marz007]

The store is nice, listening stations are okay, selection is very limited, a lot of people I had never heard of along with a small selection of more popular groups. The interface that they use to allow you to select your songs for your CD that you'll end up burning is a touch screen with a push button stylus. This is really clunky and very hard to make your selections. The one I was trying to use was wonky and very hard to select things on the touch screen. I had to click several times to get it to make the choice, some times it queued up a bunch of clicks and well, it was just too frustrating to finish the CD selections and I gave up. I'll take ITunes or something online any day.