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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.'"

15 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. 10 existing Starbucks locations in Seattle by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's 0.00000001% of the Seattle locations.

    1. Re:10 existing Starbucks locations in Seattle by funny-jack · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's 0.00000001% of the Seattle locations.

      ...in one tower downtown.

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  2. Re:Sit down and enjoy the coffee by tntguy · · Score: 5, Funny

    An epic task, given the nature of caffeine.

  3. Size/Price? by xOleanderx · · Score: 4, Funny

    I look forward to buying a Venti cd.

    1. Re:Size/Price? by digitalsushi · · Score: 2, Funny

      hehee Venti Valenti

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  4. Re:Sit down and enjoy the coffee by Steve+Embalmer · · Score: 4, Funny

    keep customers sitting down longer in their stores, consuming their products

    Heh, just what I need, more of their products. I get no sleep as it is :)

  5. Re:I smell desperation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Just ask that other famous Seattle company about that's working out for 'em.

    You mean "Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag"?

  6. Everyone wins by Psymunn · · Score: 2, Funny

    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

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    The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
  7. The three customers.. by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Funny

    who don't have their own MP3 player and/or laptop will probably appreciate this.

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    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  8. Starbuccaneer's by CHaN_316 · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

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    "There is no spoon." - The Matrix
  9. Soon, all companies will be Starbucks! by genesplicer · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!

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    Me? Debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands?
  10. Re:Not Innovative by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh, here I thought you were going to call it "not innovative" because we've seen it before...

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    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  11. Re:Core Starbucks Customer?? by kryptKnight · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's nothing, the "anarchists" around here think anarchy is a fancy way of saying goth. Of course they also draw anarachy patches with sharpie on their toungues so they'll be out of the gene pool soon enough anyway..

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    Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
  12. A relaxed environment? by UnrefinedLayman · · Score: 2, Funny
    allowing customers to choose the songs they like in a relaxed environment
    Do they know what Starbucks sells?
  13. Re:Starbucks - the Wal-Mart of Coffee Shops... by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Funny

    Once upon a time, coffee shops sold coffee, tea, hot cocoa, and other drinkables

    Another youngun. I remember when gas stations sold gas and drug stores sold drugs. Walmart was some kind of mart you bought walls from and "Starbuck's" was of or relating to the dude from Battlestar Galactica.