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.'"

Re:I smell desperation...

[Anonymous Coward]

no... he must be talking about boeing :)

An idea that's long overdue

[c0d3h4x0r]

I've always said that instead of selling tangible product, the music industry needs to shift to a content/service model. All they need to do is put up kiosks where you can insert a CD blank and your credit card, pick from an on-screen catalog, and have the kiosk burn you a copy (and maybe print you the liner notes, and spit out a jewel case, for a couple bucks more).

Of course, I imagine that the music industry would want your copy of the content to be encrypted or otherwise digitally crippled so that you couldn't do what you wanted with it. The real advancement in intellectual property law and consumer rights will come when they offer to let you buy a "no strings attached" license for the content for a buck or two more, which permits you to copy/transform the content as many times/ways as you want, as long as it's for your own non-profit personal use.

Re:Music Industry

[funny-jack]

Because they're entrenched in their current method of making money. To ditch their current method and try something new would be risky and costly. Starbucks however, is looking for new and innovative ways to expand their business, and isn't afraid to risk a little on something that may have big payoffs.

Oh, wait... was that a rhetorical question?

Core Starbucks Customer??

[g33kgirl]

'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.'

What Starbucks are they looking at? The few times I've been in a Starbucks, it's been full of dumb teenagers humming Brittney Spears songs. It's not like the stuff they're promoting isn't mainstream anyway. It's just a different branch of mainstream.

Show me a Starbucks where they play Mineral, Freakwater, or Belle and Sebastian, and I'll be impressed.

(On a slightly related note: one of the funniest things I have ever seen was at a Starbucks in St. Louis, MO, where I went to college. A bunch of punk kids (15-18 years old, I'd guess), with their anarchy patches and bright colored mohawks, were sitting outside the local Starbucks, happily sipping their corporate-whore coffee. I laughed my ass off. Ah, the irony.)

Not Innovative

[VividU]

There was something like this back in the day. It was a jukebox type deal, you'd pick your songs and it would make a tape for your, label and all. Maybe it made CD's too. I don't remember.

Fantastic, if...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they give you regular CDs with no dirty DRM tricks. MP3s, and goofey DRM is are deal killers that make me think of McDonald's stupid Bigmac tunes through Sony's DRM and Windoze only SonicStage. I'm sure that's not the image they have in mind. If it won't work in a regular CD player, I no more want it than a Bigmac.

I hate Starbucks but Schultz and MacKinnon are 100% correct. Here in Baton Rouge we have several shops that purchase, blend and roast their own coffee. Their coffee kicks Starbuck and typically cost less but good music is very attractive. I hate record stores more by a longshot than I hate the home of a second rate $4.00 cup of coffee. A set up like this could make me love them.

Now, if only they have the guts and brains to get away from RIAA label music, they would be my heros.

Futile

[Scoria]

I also wonder why the music industry hasn't.

Maybe they have. However, maybe they've also determined that those individuals are already vehemently opposed to "corporately distributed" music, and are thus unlikely to purchase their products.

Such widely propagated beliefs, after all, die hard: According to many, network news is still liberal, American corporations are still honest, and only democrats violate civil liberties. To some, large, corporate music distributors will always be nefarious. And they're already capable of legislating their business model, so why bother?

What's so special about Starbucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a computer and broadband can do this at home, already. What will be so special about Starbucks that I would want to burn CDs there instead of in my living room? I suppose if the Kiosks are cheap enough to run they can still be profitable with a small percentage of that market. But I don't see them being a music superstore.

Michael

Are these actual CD quality songs?

[rollingcalf]

Or will the songs be burned from an archive of music that has been lossly compressed (more lossy than a standard CD)? Similar to when you burn downloaded songs from an online service?

Let these be actual CD quality songs, burned to actual CDs that are playable in any standards-compliant CD player, without DRM or artificial errors or any other insane copy-protection scheme, and I will become a frequent customer. But somehow I don't think the MPAA would allow that. Knowing them, the songs must be crippled in some way, by reduced quality or encryption or both.

What's stopping the independents?

[danharan]

There are a lot of cafes that are very hip, without the poseur stereotype associated with Starbucks. Many already offer free wireless and/or computer access.

If this model was easy to implement, a lot of them would probably go for it. Maybe an enterprising slashdotter will take this on?

Nup, try again

[cuteseal]

Personally, I'd go to a coffee shop to drink coffee, and to a music store to burn/buy music. Yes, maybe listen to music, but not buy music. Besides, you already queue up for your coffee - now you want to queue up for your music as well while your coffee goes cold?

Who uses CDs anymore?

[iamacat]

I can not put one in my iPod. And if I don't lose or scratch it on the way home, I get to manually enter each track title.

They should offer a) 128Kbps CBR MP3 downloads over their wireless connection and b) business card-sized mini-CDs with a copy of the above. Sure both record companies and audiophiles will riot, but that's what 99% of customers want and use. Whoever wants to make money selling music better take notice.

Re:What's so special about Starbucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a computer and broadband can do this at home, already. What will be so special about Starbucks

I have a computer and broadband, and I would buy this service! I would LOVE to hand my song list to someone who would cut the CD. My time is worth more than the hour it takes dinking around with downloads and ripping and buying blank CD's and creating a CD, and creating a label. Much rather hand it off to a "specialist" (a kid doing it all day for cheap).

Re:Core Starbucks Customer??

[darth_abaddon]

Show me a Starbucks where they play Mineral, Freakwater, or Belle and Sebastian, and I'll be impressed

If your in Santa Monica, CA, your might want to to take a gander at the Hear Music/Starbucks store there. You can listen to any CD & read all the liner notes, while sipping down some outrageously expensive 3rd rate coffee.
Love "Hear Music", hate "Starbucks".

fuck that

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't everyone just agree to meet at a certain place (Starbucks or whatever) and then just mass trade files over Wi-Fi?

If there are any problems using "their network," then bring your own AP and do it all yourself.

Hell, if that's too slow, just trade burned DVD+/-Rs at these Starbucks.

Digital Music Done Dirt Cheap?

[pmaccabe]

I posted this as an Ask Slashdot but it was rejected. Just thought I'd throw it out for anyone looking for good digital music dirt cheap. This seemed an appropriate place.

I recently discovered AllOfMP3 [allofmp3.com], a Russian music store, because I was trying to find music by Eva Cassidy [evacassidy.org] online and neither iTunes [itunes.com] or Napster [napster.com] carry her music [washingtonpost.com].

This site offers pay by bandwidth download of digital music, $10(US) per 1GB, and even allows you to select the bitrate and format of your download (including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc). I was a bit wary at first, and I carefully reviewed the legal info [allofmp3.com] provided on the site. I was reassured by the fact that they accept PayPal and are PayPal verified among other payment methods [allofmp3.com], I decided to risk $10. I have been greatly pleased with the results.

My questions for the Slashdot community are: Are there any legal issues I could run into using this site? If so what are they?

This is by far the best deal I've seen in digital music, so I keep looking for the catch. If there isn't one, well enjoy the music! And yes I know ... in Soviet Russia digital music plays you.

Re:I smell desperation...

[nozzle!]

In 1995 Money magazine published an article claiming it was high time to ditch Starbucks' stock, since the market was obviously saturated and they couldn't sustain their growth. I believe starbucks was about half its current size at the time.

Comments from anyone who's actually been there?

[NeilO]

I recently stopped by Hear Music and saw all this stuff in person.

The listening kiosks are HP Tablet PCs running (presumably) Windows XP. They are placed throughout the store and default to a selection of albums pulled from that section, i.e. in the blues section you get a handful of blues albums to preview. In the jazz section it's a handful of jazz albums, etc. Just as you would expect.

However, at any listening station you can scan the barcode on just about any CD in the store, and get a playlist of the complete contents of that album. The delay is noticeably longer than waiting for a CD changer, but obviously you have *way* more material to choose from. (Changing from song to song within a given album seems slower than hitting "next" on a CD player, which is a bit annoying, but surely they can fix that.)

There's a sit-down counter where you can build your mix. I was in a hurry and didn't ask the obvious questions, e.g. how much for a custom mix disc, do you get uncompressed or lossy compressed, is there any copy protection. I did notice two Rimage CD sitting in plain view behind the counter.

I've always liked the "smallness" of Hear Music compared to a behemoth like Tower Records. The feel is more like Newbury Comics in Boston (or how they used to be, anyways). The use of technology is a little raw and immature, but in general it seems to work without ruining the small store feel. Just my opinion, of course.