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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.'"
That's 0.00000001% of the Seattle locations.
Sigs cause cancer.
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.'"
:-P
Wonder how they came to that conclusion.
I also wonder why the music industry hasn't.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I look forward to buying a Venti cd.
Poor Starbucks. They've delivered growth at the expense of profitability for sooooo long, and now the bills are coming due.
They'll learn the lesson that no one seems capable of learning from history: you can't rely on expansion to keep up your cash flow forever.
Just ask that other famous Seattle company about how that's working out for 'em.
Well, good luck there, Starbucks. Nice having known you. Good luck with that "branching out" thing.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
...Finally, someone who had a good idea on how to market music, and I don't drink coffee...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Starbucks - Your Next Music Superstore?
I hope not! The coffee is already outrageously expensive as it is. You can just image how expensive the music sold there will be.
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
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.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Starbucks - Your Next Anti-Trust?
it's a sig, wtf?
Yeah I only go to starbucks for the coffee I don't think I'd be interested in music there too.. but whatever they can try new strategies if they want.
[www.dvdsbydesign.com shows that never made it to the shelf]
'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.)
You don't have to be the person you've become.
Well, I guess I'm the target market. I listen to NPR, can't stand MTV, and goto StarBucks to use the Free* Internet. I hope the music is to my taste.
We shall have to see. But I doubt it.
Ted
*Free becuase my company pays for it.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
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.
This has the potential to become another non-conventional music outlet like iTMS, but only if they do it right.
The "NPR-not-MTV listener" they are catering to will have widely varying music tastes, not just the Top 40. How much of a selection will each Starbucks provide? Do they plan to have T1 linkups to a central server? If they work with local storage, then the source tracks will probably be already compressed tracks, affecting quality. I don't see each Starbucks having a half-terabyte RAID array to hold losslessly compressed originals.
Secondly, price. This can be a one-stop-music-shop, catering not just to those who see it and burn/buy a CD on a whim. Since it doesn't offer any of the advantages of iTMS-style music downloads (instant transfer to computers, portables, etc.), they better price it at less than $0.99 a track. A fixed-price option, e.g. 1 80-minute CD for $12-$15 might be very popular.
It's upto Starbucks to use its enormous geographical clout to negotiate a sweetheart deal with the recording industry, and make it as attractive to the customer as possible. Otherwise, with audio-CD only Discmans going the way of the dodo, and the growing popularity of iTMS-like solutions, this scheme will turn out at best to be a novelty.
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.
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?
Do you like German cars?
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
NO, it's a simple business model. It's really sort of a ... not a pyramid, more of a triangle, not so much a scheme... but a plan
Yes, it's a triangle plan. See, all you have to do is open two starbucks, adn get all your employees to open two starbucks. I'll show you some sexy graphs with you holding a lot of money. EVERYONE WINS AND WE ALL RETIRE BY 25
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Once upon a time, coffee shops sold coffee, tea, hot cocoa, and other drinkables. A few added various sweet pastries, like croissants, but that was about it. Then along comes the post-expansion Sign O' the Mermaid (it was once a little independent coffee shop, too).
Suddenly, to keep up with the Seattle Menace, coffee shops must now sell all of the above as well as sandwiches, soup, coffee mugs, branded coffee makers, candy, books, gift cards... you get the idea. A small coffee shop that just wants to focus on the core product -- namely, coffee -- has to work hard to establish a niche in the neighborhood or close its doors. Most of them don't want to be multi-specialty retailers, and they shouldn't have to be.
Starbucks now sells so many things that coffee is almost an afterthought. Think that won't affect the quality of the product? Do a taste-test with Starbucks versus one of the other chains out there. (Personal favorite: Diedrich's.) Even the lightest of Starbucks' roasts (most are pretty dark) comes off tasting acidic and rather burnt.
So yeah: make room, if you want, alongside the logo-emblazoned travel mugs and Starbucks brand press-pots for "Mermaid Music Vols. 1" through infinity. I'll walk up the street to my local indie coffee shop and get cuppa joe that doesn't taste like muddy battery acid.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
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.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
You can't even trust Charbucks to not burn their coffee, and that's what they are supposed to be good at. No WAY would they be able to handle a music store.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
who don't have their own MP3 player and/or laptop will probably appreciate this.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
If this happens starbucks and borders will be exactly the same store... why dont they just merge?
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
While I agree with most of what you say, I had a couple notes I wanted to make:
1. On half-terabyte RAID arrays: keep in mind that one can fit 800GB in two 3.5" half-height bays these days. Compressed losslessly, that's a hell of a lot of music. (Based on my own experience with FLAC getting songs to 33-40% of their original size, I'd estimate 3510 full CDs.)
2. On the content, Starbucks is already pushing a lot of indie or pseudo-indie jazz, blues, and world content. They've got the content to draw on, and it's diverse, if niche. Moving this off of CD inventory into an on-demand system could actually save them money, not to mention increase selection (and, presumably, sales).
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?
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I RTFA expecting to come out of it thinking "gee, brand dilution like this usually means the beginning of the end for companies." Instead, I was surprised to end up thinking what a neat idea this could be, if implemented correctly.
I think I'm probably preaching to the choir here when I say that there are lots of songs out there that I like but so very few full albums that I want to own. Thus, the joy that is P2P and iTMS; combined with a cd burner, all the music I listen to in my car these days is mixed the way I want it to be, and in ways you'll never find on a commercial mix (try finding a CD with Nightwish, E Nomine, and L'Arc en~Ciel on it ^_^). So the idea of a mix cd with actual labelling and even liner notes is naturally fairly appealing. Simply put, it passes the "I'd give it a try" test.
Three major questions that aren't answered in the article, though, which would be major deciding factors for me:
Nevertheless, I think this is a fairly neat idea; the current distribution models for music have left a lot of great stuff behind, so going back to a system where people can get recommendations and such is pretty cool. And the inclusion of the Audiogalaxy-esque "you might also like . . ." feature is just awesome; that was my favorite part of AG, and it's something I sorely miss.
the core Starbucks customer, an affluent 25- to 50-year-old
*caugh* bullshit *errhem*
"I am affluent, now give me coffee you little tatooed and pierced piece of crap!"
know I know where to hang if I want to meet affluent folks or just want to feel the affluence in the air.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
They could post here and be ignored by Slashdotters. That's what I do.
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 Music Store, and AllOfMP3 to be viable, and more preferable, alternatives.
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?
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Actually I think what Starbucks is doing is trying to find ways to leverage the fact that they are everywhere. If retail is all about location, location, location, then Starbucks is in a really good position. Spending more time there doesn't actually help Starbucks unless you keep buying more coffee. While have wifi might cause that to happen, this wouldn't.
Basically Starbucks is well suited to selling anything that doesn't take much physical space. Why go to tower records, when you can just go grab a mocha and burn exactly what you want? Why go to Blockbuster, when you can burn the movie you want at Starbucks? Why go to Best Buy to get the latest software when you can get it at Starbucks?
Of course the obvious question is why don't you just get all that stuff off of Itunes, etc. Starbucks is targeting the market that is really most likely to be in the know about Itunes, etc. So I do wonder if their opportunity here is fleeting.
The same thing might be said about their wifi hotspots. Good theory, but with more places offering it for free, and 3g slowly working its way into the world, it's really not as valuable. The advantage they have is that they are ubiquitous and a lot of people are going to go there for coffee anyhow. But if I can go someplace that has good coffee and free wifi why would I pay at Starbucks?
It is getting harder and harder to hate Starbucks every day. I try, but my will is breaking down. They have so much going for them nowdays:
- pretty good coffee
- reasonable prices
- comfortable atmophere, including good music playing and plenty of room to study
Now add the fact that they are making an attempt to sell decent music to non-britney-lovers, and I really have to hand it to them. They know how to wooo a customer.
Did you forget that Starbucks already has a deal providing T-Mobile hotspots at their locations? They are already primed for this given that infrastructure - play some little cache-forward/Top 30 favorites at this location kinda games to work on low-bandwidth points.
:)
But then again, since when have they put up locations where there isn't enough traffic to warrant a proper network connection?
Hell, their almost always close enough to eachother to use mesh networks
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
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.
You can't even trust Charbucks to not burn their coffee
They are supposed to burn the CDs, you know.
> 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 isn't the right word.
"Persecuted" is closer...
"Prosecuted", that's it, "prosecuted" is the right word.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
This article reminded me of a strange device I saw at the grocery store the other day. After closer inspection, the machine turned out to be automatic picture burner. You just flipped empty cd in and plugged the memory card from your camera to the drive and with assistance of 2-row lcd display, it burned the contents of your memory card to the cd.
As for starbucks, it was one of the stores I wanted to visit on my trip to usa, and it was slight dissappointment.. their coffee wasn't that good at all, atleast their regular black one
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Well I don't know that this will fly in Austin...its a rather fickle place for music stores and only the crem de la crem make it here. So it will have to very well thought out...and executed.
I have watched every major chain record store come through here and then close...due to the superiority of great local shops here. But then again those are closing at alarming rates too.
At Starbucks on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, they've already done this. It's actually pretty cool--they've got a pretty good library of music, and it's expanding pretty quickly, from what I've been able to tell.
I think Starbucks can increase their revenue by following Monkey Island 4's lead. They should open a Starbuccaneer's which caters to today's modern pirates (y'arr). They could offer free p2p services inside which will allow mighty pirates to steal games, movies, and music!
Screenshots of the Starbuccaneer's concepts available here and here.
I'm sure Starbucks can buy the licence to use Starbuccaneer's pretty easily.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
Up here in the land of Tim Horton's, Ron James (a stand-up comic) jokes that he "likes to go to a Starbucks once in a while to see what the world would be like if the Nazis had won the war."
Might this music distribution idea further their aims??
Hail Mermaid!
Me? Debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands?
Really, it's not that hard of a problem to solve. Especially if the system implementers have access to 24/7 free coffee during the development period...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Here.
Do the editors actually look to see if... nevermind. I'm not new here...
let's burn us some mod points!
This being Starbucks, a large proportion of their clientele are gonna have iPods, so they really ought to have co-branded iTMS kiosks on site, with special deals prominently featured. E.g., they could sell a "mocha mix" of songs, 10 for 5 bucks, that would have 5 songs you pick yourself mixed in with 5 preselected "freebies" picked for you by StarApple's marketing arm. Or maybe a "3 songs and a latte combo". Or some other creative deal that doesn't isn't limited by physical media.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I just bought some put options on Starbucks' stock. This can't be good....
I remember seeing these while on vacation in San Diego in 1990. If anything, using CDs make these things faster & cheaper than the cassette models.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Starbucks plans to have 100 coffee shops across the country"
Well that about covers dowtown Seattle.
When I was in high school in the late '80s, I worked at the mall at Record Town, a brand that has been replaced now. Back then they were owned by Trans-World music, and were the penultimate example of the overpriced, middle American record store.
We had this gizmo for a while, before CDs fully supplanted cassettes, and before burnable CDs were de rigeur (I believe Philips was holding the patent, and the record industry cartel was trying to block them from releasing it...sound familiar?). Anyway, it basically was a touch screen CD jukebox that'd let you peruse a rather large catalog (for its time) of music and select a number of songe which were automatically recorded to cassette for you. Since I worked there, I got a few of these tapes, and it was a cool way to get some music that I didn't otherwise want to purchase.
Anyway, I am struck by how this is exactly the SAME THING all over again...just as CDs are about to be replaced by digital files, someone is going to try to cash in on the last bit of the CD money before it evaporates.
The real issue here is that the idiotic music industry is basically a 'singles machine', though they desperately want to be an 'album machine'. They have been fightint tooth and nail against models like this that move the "single" to the paramount of importance, even though the real truth is, we have always cared about singles, for the most part, rather than long droning albums. Most bands have one or two good songs in them anyway. I wish they'd just wake up and realize this...
gameDB
$1.60 for a 12 ounce cup of coffee is too much?
Wow! It's almost as good as iTMS and I have to drive to Starbucks to use it. What a great idea!
Oh, here I thought you were going to call it "not innovative" because we've seen it before...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Starbucks serves every BUT coffee.
-Cnik
What is the purpose of commercial radio? To affect consumer preference by luring you in with music then making the pitch with an ad.
Couple an iPod to a WiFi card, and you have a location based music distribution system. You do the same thing as radio except every song you give away has guaranteed brought someone to your physical location.
Soon Starbucks will just outright buy U@ and Britney songs to distribute.
This is gonna kill commercial radio, and the record companies. Look for one record company to be a clearinghouse for rights.
Just posting this to make sure there is some prior art documented.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
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.
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.
... in Soviet Russia digital music plays you.
I recently discovered AllOfMP3, a Russian music store, because I was trying to find music by Eva Cassidy online and neither iTunes or Napster carry her music.
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 provided on the site. I was reassured by the fact that they accept PayPal and are PayPal verified among other payment methods, 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
It looks like more and more these franchise, super chains are going to start expanding their offering to appeal to a wide cross section of customers and increase revenue or stave off bad press. I have visions of some time not to far in the distant future where the only restaurant is Macdonalds. It servers everything from sushi, through to al la carte french dining as well as burgers. When people go out to eat they go to the local Macdonalds. Now Starbucks sells music only, next time there will be internet access to a variety of order online places that deliver your shopping by the time you finish the coffee.... the only place to go shopping becomes starbucks!
If the record industry wants to pee on them, they need to look outside of the RIAA. There's a booming independent recording industry out there just waiting for something like this.
In the end, set ups like this will wreck the RIAA anyway. The RIAA was set up to sell 40 songs from 20 artists a week on vinyl. There's no way they can maintain their power without a broadcasting monopoly and robot DJs pumping out the same crapola everywhere. Once stores like this take over, RIAA will become just another supplier. For most of us they are already irrelevant. If they balk, they will become completely irrelevant. Distribution like this is taking music to people who don't know how to turn on a Mac. They are going to get used to having a choice that's not RIAA owned.
Otherwise, with audio-CD only Discmans going the way of the dodo, and the growing popularity of iTMS-like solutions, this scheme will turn out at best to be a novelty.
If they make real, non DRM'd CDs, they are my next music store. DRM'd junk is the flash in the pan, soon to go away. I've never bought into it and most people never will, just like DivX.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
At my first job, we all went for a morning coffee break at the food court together every day. The first day, I agreed with you; I walked around the food court, found a place that had an 8 ounce cup for 50 cents, and got that while my co-workers went to starbucks. It was awful; after that I just went to startbucks too; factoring in what you get, the $1.60 for 12 ounces is by far the better deal. Especially since I get 20 ounces for $1.85, so it's practically the same price.
The record companies (in other words the Music Industry) will be supplying the music. So this will be different how?
Some people have mentioned that maybe we will be able to pick and choose our songs. Well, no, that's not the idea. They will sell CD's of lesser known artists or older ones that can't sell records anymore (like the Eagles or Elton John-I am NOT making this up-read the interview).
Look, this may be a good idea for Starbucks. It may get people to spend more money (CD's, plus more coffee). And the record companies (sell more CD's without any work....) But it isn't revolutionary or even new.
This could be very cool. I don't have any of their mugs. I hate their coffee and think of them like McDonald's. Heck, I think McDonald's has better coffee. So what? I want non-DRM'd full quality custom CDs and I might even buy a cup of coffee while I'm there.
I've bought Starbuck's twice. Once because everyone deserves one chance and once because someone gave me gift cards. Here in Baton Rouge, there are actually places that import, blend and roast their own coffee. You might have heard of one of them, Comunity, they make half the country's coffee. They have much better and less expensive coffee than Starbucks. There are others too, Highland Road, PJ's being prominent. They have much better and less expensive coffee than Starbucks, so where to go is a no brainer.
Like a lot of people my age (old fart), I never did the MP3 and Napster thing. While I hate the RIAA and everything it stands for, downloading music makes me feel just as cheap as they are. What's more other people I know who did that kind of thing ended up with rooted machines and worse. I've got my simple and honest music collection, all ripped to Ogg from Vinyl, CDs bought at clubs or given to me as gifts. I've traded tapes and CDs but I'm a sucker and just can't bring myself to run P2P programs, anonymous ftp and that kind of thing even to collect music that would be public domain without Mickey Mouse. By the same token, I'm not going anywhere near DRM'd crap, especially stuff that has to be played on a $300 gadget.
There's plenty of music I'd like to have and Starbucks looks like the place to get it. Radio sucks, don't have time or money to waste buying pot luck at the record store, which is one place I hate to be more than Starbucks. Being able to pick and chose music for CDs where I can listen to them first in a nice calm place is very appealing. It's attractive enough that I'll put up with everything I hate about Starbucks.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
it closed up after several months...somthing about serving burned coffee... :)
Too bad , it sounded like a neat place to take my cable car double mocha and hang out
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Not to be pesimistic, I don't see the starbucks mugs and toys flying off the shelf. People go there for coffee and cream. While they might sell a few songs, they're not bringing down Apple anytime soon.
It seems to me that the target demographic are the same sort of people who are slightly ahead of the general population in tech adoption and are also the same people who would eschew CDs as being passe.
I'm sure these guys have done their homework, but this sounds to me like a project that was initiated before the iTunes music store showed that pay-per-download music really could work.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
'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'm a 33-year old, relatively affluent, NPR listening (WNKU) Starbuck's customer (I have a First Edition Duetto Card). All I have to say is that I feel quite ignored by commercial radio.
I don't see each Starbucks having a half-terabyte RAID array to hold losslessly compressed originals.
A 0.5TB RAID array costs less than a candybar or soda vending machine.
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.
Oh please, please, try patenting this idea! I wrote up such a beast in 1997, going as far as having a working demo burnstation in Visual Basic and ISAPI (or whatever the old pre-CGI Windows thing was called...)
It's archived in comments on slashdot (search for it... I'm being lazy!) and I've even received email years later (last year, actually) from someone who saw my idea posted somewhere and wanted some details.
This isn't new... it's certainly not "Starbucks The Innovator", but hey, if someone's letting them have the media without giving them hassles over royalties, etc. then more power to them.
I just wish I knew more people with VC / Angel money so I could *implement* all these years-ahead ideas before everyone else does!
Anyone have any money up for grabs?
mindslip
dszego@mindslip.com.please.don't.spam.me!
What is this "Starbucks" you speak of? Does it have to do with spending money in outer space?
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
'This August, Starbucks will install individual music-listening stations, with CD-burning capabilities - ?
How yesterday is that? Give me a way to upload to my iPod instead and I'm in.
At my favorite Starbucks, the one at the corner of NW 23rd Ave and Overton St. in Portland Oregon, I heard Elis Regina "Folhas Secas" and Salif Keita "Bolon" within an hour.
I couldn't believe it.
Someone who seriously knows good music is programming their tunes.
Hi can I now pay to much for my crap 128 kb mp3 (or other format)the same way I pay to much for my latte...FOR GODS SAKE PEOPLE DONT PAY 3 OR 4$'S FOR YOUR COFFEE..but if you must at least make an effort to not buy from starfucks
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I for one welcome our coffee swilling, boogey woogey overlords.
Pair is just fear leaving your body...either that or your body crying out to your brain that you are causing it imminent harm.
Why would it wreck the RIAA (which is the lobby group for the record industry, BTW)?
From reading the interview (yeah, I know, click on the links to get more info, what the heck is THAT all about?) it sounds like free money. All they (Starbucks) will be doing is selling CD's from artists that don't get a lot of top-40 play. To people who might not buy the stuff anyway. Basically it will be FREE targeted marketing (by Starbucks) for the industry (these will be industry bands).
It was reported by DSN Retailing Today in their April 5, 2004 issue in this article.
Transistors and Beer!!
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.
...if they're not the ones doing it. Note that it's isn't Starbucks recruiting talent, working out technical glitches, and otherwise managing the distribution of music. They're managing the space in Starbucks' stores to make it more attractive to Starbucks' customers -- which is exactly their core competency.
And, though anecdotes mean very little in this game, I can't count the number of times that I wish I could have burned a copy of the music playing in a cofeehouse around here. As long as it isn't outrageously expensive, I can see it being very popular....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
So let me get this straight - the RIAA is going to make money through a pairing of HP with Starbucks. I see it has begun...
All we need now is to have Microsoft write the operating system, Coca-Cola to offer promotions, Disney to open these special Starbucks in their parks, and have ClearChannel cover the whole event on all their stations and it will finally be time to welcome the end of the world.
It's a good thing Starbucks came up with this idea - because nobody spends enough time at coffee shops as it is. Last I heard, Starbucks was getting close to going under! Perhaps this will help them finally gain an advantage over their competitors.
most of the customers at starbucks can afford even slightly pricier options (just got to position it right to appeal to their vanity)
.. try some new tracks.. pick up a new car music to get back to my ride...
also i guess I would love to try something like this on impulse esp. on long rides... stop over for a coffee
I thought for a second that perhaps I now had a reason to ever go to Starbucks - you see, I don't like coffee ;) ...
... Online stores actually make it more expensive. Eg. if I wanted to buy my favorite works, Bach's Goldberg Variations, I would have to buy 32 tracks. Multiply that by the 30 versions I have. At iTunes' price, that's $960 . At retail prices, at about $15 per CD, that's $450 ... Through music clubs, at $7 per CD, it's $210 ...
But, it seems they also chose to ignore my musical tastes by not planning on having any classical music available apparently.
Oh well. I thought I fit the demographic well - I'm between 25 - 50 (actually, I haven't made the big 3 yet) and I'm rather affluent. Guess they are not interested.
On a side note, I have yet to find a decent commercial vehicle for classical music other than traditional retail stores and mail order. Online music stores just don't get it - they charge by the track, and that's not the way any classical music enthusiast buys music. You might buy one track to preview, but if you are interested, you buy the whole recording
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
They state the customer will get to choose music in a relaxed environment. Starbucks? Relaxed???
Everytime I go to Starbucks you have to keep your wits about you to make sure the guy actually takes the correct order, then you got to make sure you actually get made the right drink, then you have to watch no one collects your drink by accident, then you have to fight for a seat.
I need another coffee after all that, just to cope with the stress. No wonder they make so much money...Im up and down to the counter like a yo-yo.
what the fuck does starbucks know about music? When one unrelated -- but dominant retailer -- moves into another area, what do they bring? What added value does starbucks provide to music sales? A staff deeply trained in music theory? Local / National / International music? Musicians on staff who moonlight who can provide insight into the music? Connections with the music industry that allows them to connect with would-be-fans?
Nothing. Starbucks brings nothing. This is why i buy my music at Dr. Disc in Windsor, ON. When i go into this music store, i can speak with a staff who is informed about their product. Contrast this to Walmart, BurgerKing and Starbucks. All inept in everycase, far far to interested in being profitable than providing a capable service.
Further, Ive never drank Starbucks coffee. I much prefer my local, owener/operator small cafe. They roast their beans onsite. Try new things. Ask my opinion. They are deeply aware of the coffee industry worldwide, coffee cultivation, socioecomomic issues of international coffee trade (fair trade, shadegrowing, organics, etc), and other issues. Theyve shown me how to roast coffee. My patronizing *this* coffee shop has made me a better person (provided me with knowledge).
In short, while it is delightfull (in a geeksense) that starbucks is going to use its riches to assault the existing music distribution paradigm, I find it sad that the retail/production plutocratic cartel is so entrenched that innovation no longer occurs on the fringes to unsettle the marketplace. Instead, the game has been rigged to raise the barrier to entry where only the mega-rich can participate... and as a consequence, the service/product becomes worse and worse where MBAs take the place of all the worlds capable/informed business owners... instead, delivering a homoginzed brand-experience for consumers in consumerland.
Sucks to Starbucks, Ill continue with the quality coffee up the street *AND* buy my music from a proper music retailer.
starbucks partnering with hp but hp licenced itunes and ipods from apple last year so could we be seeing rebranded apple products in starbucks
I saw one in a local restaurant. It dispenses a CD for three three days for a dollar. However, if you dont return, your credit card is charged $25. They've just started advertising this.
as 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., I consider myself lucky to be ignored by the music industry. and luckier still -- I'm not likely to step into any Starbucks where I'd have to see these newfangled burning stations.
'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.'" Yeah, right! How sophisticated do they think these trendy farts are? The confuse their customer base with that of a real, privately owned, coffee shop.
Ahh yes, we used to cruise over to Pico and 4th just to beat up those punks at SaMo "High" -- buncha friggin losers; they'd always cry and wet their pants.