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Burnt Coffee and Burnt CDs
senzafine writes "Cnet reports that HP and Starbucks are jointly working on Storefront Coffeeshops which will allow people to browse and listen to music from a digital library...and have selected songs burned to cd. Sounds really cool...wonder how long before Starbucks and HP get John Doe lawsuits in the mail. --- But does this seem like an idea that would work?"
Yes. Would the prices be reasonable? Doubtful.
I'd like to calm the rhetoric. Sure, common sense would indicate the RIAA's copyrights have been violated. But copyright has been heavily legislated over the past century to the point that common sense or common law is nearly absent. It has such things as compulsory licences and device royalties. Morality should be confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions to intellectual property law. It is disingenuous for the RIAA to invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence in crafting legislation.
IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens, legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL :) Apologies for a
US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in
all other common-law countries with different details. There's an
excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at Cornell.
Chapter 10 covers DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA .
Particularly interesting is:
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions... No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
Simply breathtaking! The words "this title" mean Title 17, which contains all of US copyright law. The first "based on" means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence ("burglars tools"). The second "based on" means non-commercial use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!
The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers. They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others. But all is not [Guns'N'] roses. The manufacturers of these recording devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified. There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management System. I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al. But even if not, how does it affect me?
The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving music files to make recordings on a hard-disk. Offering to transmit music files might not be covered and fall under the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service". But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to give a better interpretation including case precedents. The Diamond Rio MP3 player case is probably relevant. Is there a lawyer in the house?
Given HP's recent relationship with Apple on a rebranded iPod, does that mean that 1) the tunes sold in starbucks will be AAC and/or 2) that iTunes will be involved?
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The price? For anyone that hasn't been to Starbucks recently the prices of RIDICULOUS, although it is a very relaxed environment, nice chairs and very good coffee.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
sounds like a neat thing to try.. not really sure if it's incredibly practical.. or if anyone would care after the initial 'wow' and 'hey thats kinda cool; thing wears off
This distribution method seems ideal for Linux also. Perhaps if HP weren't afraid of MS, we could also get nice bootable Linux distro while waiting for a venti mocha.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I don't know, this sounds like a dumb idea to me. I mean, I just don't see the synnergy between the two brands. If I want to go out for coffee, I go out for coffee. If I want to listen to music, I either go to a club or (back before I decided to boycott music) check out a music store. I guess some people go to coffee places to pick up girls and flirt, and amongst the young musical tastes can be a critical selection trait, and the young are an attractive demographic to target, but even so I don't see this catching on, really.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Why must everyone be involved with music these days? Pepsi, Coke, Starbucks....
What's next? I'm going to get a free song with a Happy Meal? I guess there are a lot of execs out there that think if you don't offer music in one way or another, then you must be doomed. I esitmate that in a few years, we will be back to several high quality music choices.
--
Real-time deal updates
I'm curious as to what possible reasoning Starbucks used to enter this completely alien market. There's little money to be made from it and it seems impractical due to the time required to both burn the CD and create the playlist. Unless their goal is to keep the customer in their store for longer periods of time -- which I could see as a viable business model -- there really doesn't seem to be any strategy involved.
As an employee of a publically-traded rival corporation [Peet's Coffee & Tea] I'm not exactly unbiased here, but I'm wondering what others have to say about the strategy behind such a radical departure from the typical role of a coffee shop.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
If HP and StarBucks can get this going legally and without hassles from RIAA et al against them or customers, wouldn't the next logical step be offering downloads directly to your iPAQ?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Who loses in the end? The music stores, anyway.
At long last the secret of Starbucks' "very good coffee" is revealed: burn the holy living shit out of your beans!
Now you, too, can have that wonderful taste of charred coffee in your very own home!
I think the reason for the music tie-in is that there's more and more competition for the coffee-drinker's dollar and they need to come up with new ways to stand out. Within two blocks of my apartment, there's a Starbucks, a Seattle's best, and two local coffee houses. 10 minute's walk up the street, there a cluster of about 6 more coffee places, including 2 Starbucks at the same intersection.
But between the insane cost and the burnt flavour of their coffee, I never go to Starbucks and the ability to put together a CD isn't going to entice me.
Here's the issue: music used to be expensive (full albums $18, singles $6). Now, music is getting cheap, or at least affordable (albums $10, singles $1). That makes it a perfect thing for companies to give away. People are still used to thinking of music as expensive, but in actual fact, that is an incorrect assesment. So a music giveaway seems like a better deal than it really is, so everyone's rushing to offer free music before perceived value falls to current market levels.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Have they even been into one of their shops recently? On any given morning the place is packed beyond all reason. Adding a laptop listening station and headphones will only add to that problem.
There are three types of people in starbucks: Those freaky, overhyped, quad-shot espresso people, who are terminally late to work and just forgot to pick up their kids from soccer practice; the blue collar men in dirty clothes who are so relaxed you would think someone slipped prozac into their spam; and the college kids / young pros with their laptops who come to get some work done in the peace and quiet of a store full of caffeine withdrawal victims screaming for soy milk in their peppermint no-whip half-caf grande white mochas. None of the above seem like the type who would hang out to pay for music... too busy, occupied, or just poor. Admittedly, this might fly in the retail store locations (the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, for example), as they draw a more relaxed, less goal-oriented crowd, but I can hardly see their host stores being happy about the competition.
Starbucks does this every now and then. They had that crazy arrangement with Kozmo before they went Kaput, whereby drop-off stations were strategically placed in every Starbucks in exchange for some significant quantity of realbucks. Kozmo might actually have made it if it wasn't for that tremendous monetary commitment.
Personally, I don't see this arrangement being significantly more successful than that one.
Oh well. They've got the money to try, I guess. Someday they'll find another use for their successful cafe chain. Besides, of course, being the seat of power for Mister Evil. Sorry, Doctor Evil.
*full disclosure- used to be a Barrista. I was young, I needed the money.
The ______ Agenda
Though Linux is very flexible, without all those licensing issues (go ahead and troll, SCO trolls) like Windows, it is highly unlikely that SBUX and HP are going to use it on this system for two reasons that I know of: 1. They are going to use TabletPC's for this, something Linux has somewhat limited support for, particularly in the handwriting recognition aspect. 2. HP's provider of digital music is most likely going to be Apple, and this means a modified version of iTunes. Apple has not included Linux support for anything.
Moreover, 12" Vinyl has made a huge comeback over the past few years because its "mixable" and "scratchable," on turntables, great for live performance purposes.
One thing that could be effective here is the following:
1. A song is playing in Starbucks.
2. You like what you hear.
3. You go to the "jukebox to go" (or whatever they will call it), click the "buy what's on now" button, and pay $1 for the song and $1 for the CD ($2.00 total).
I keep thinking about the scene in High Fidelity, where John Cusack says "I'm going to sell a copy of x album right now" and then puts on a record. Sure enough, someone comes up and asks what is playing and buys it. The impulse buy in an environment is powerful. I often hear things in record stores, etc. and would love to have an easy way to buy it.
Answer: Never.
Here's a clue about how to avoid lawsuits: don't break the law.
<bart
What exactly are they selling?
- a Raw Audio track in all ways identical to what you get when you purchase a mass-market factory-pressed CD?
- the WAV file equivalent?
- the {insert preferred lossless encoded format here} equivalent?
- a 320Kbps encoded MP3? (ie plays everywhere and not-quite-but-nearly-as-good-as-lossless)
- a 16kbps encoded MP3? (ie totally-crap-but-still-plays-anywhere)
- the {insert hellspawn DRM managed format here} equivalent?
Methinks people need to wake up and smell the HYPE.(ie buy ~16 of these and you have "an audio CD")
If this was a shameless attempt to score off the recent Digital Music wave, it didn't work. Yahoo Finance shows SBUX Stock didn't do all that well Friday (Reuters had this news Thu March 11 ~8pm)
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This is a great idea.
Many people want custom mixed CDs, are willing to pay for them, but they are not willing to pay for a high speed connection or for a huge collection of second hand CDs in order to get the individual songs they want.
Steve
Yeah, and then as soon as you sync your iPod when you get home, you lose whatever music you have on it that's not in your main mp3 collection. You can't transfer songs FROM the iPod remember.
After being pampered by the likes of Kazaa I decided I wanted to buy a music CD.
I've purchased indie bands online, but I really haven't been in a music "store" for a decade. I quickly found myself in a foreign place.
There were a number of albums for the artist I wanted, while the one I'd specifically decided to buy wasn't in stock.
I decided that maybe I'd buy something else, too, but just as quickly found that *gulp!* there's no way to sample the tunes before you buy!
So, you spend $12-$20 without being able to "kick the tires" and no way to sample the tunes first?
Just rediculous. I'm surrounded by thousands of albums from hundreds of artists, and have no idea what I might be interested in.
I eventually bought a mediocre "Alanis Morrissette unplugged" CD that I really don't appreciate all that much - she sounds bored, without her usual passion and fire.
Preview, then buy? I might very happily do it! Ever see Magna Tunes?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.