Starbucks: now serving with cream, chocolate flakes, music

My first thought when I saw that Starbucks was bringing its free music download of the week offer to the UK was 'were they not doing that here?' I mean, it's half a bloody decade since they introduced it in the US, and they were quick enough to launch that horrible powdered instant coffee muck over here.

My second thought was 'they're still doing it in the US?' I've drunk a substantial amount of coffee in Starbucks in the US, and can't recall having seen an iTunes Pick of The Week promotion for at least two years and haven't been offered a download-redeemy card since... since my memory was sharp enough to hold on to the memory of when things like this happen.

Mind you:

Henceforth, customers visiting Starbucks coffee shops will be given an iTunes gift card that they can redeem on the iTunes Store within 60 days to grab the free download. The service kicks off with James Morrison’s In My Dreams.

I could just be blocking it all out.

Starbucks quits the music biz - sort of

Starbucks have moved backwards from their attempts to run a music business alongside a coffee shop, announcing that it's going to pass all day-to-day control in its HearMusic joint venture to partner Concord Music.

It seems having all those demo tapes on the kitchen table was getting in the way of brewing coffee:

"As part of our ongoing transformation, we are committed to examining all aspects of our business that are not directly related to our core," said Howard Schultz, chairman, president and CEO of Starbucks. Citing the eight Grammy Awards the label's artists have received, he continued, "now is the appropriate time to restructure our entertainment business to better align our efforts with our overall business strategies."

In other words: put down that bloody guitar and make some coffee, will you?

Starbucks turns out to be money-making business

There's a curious piece in the New York Times which bemoans Starbuck's increasing range of CDs for sale, and the consequential mainstreaming of taste:

[T]he ardor for Starbucks has gone the way of yesterday morning’s grounds. Critics in the music industry say the company squandered its cachet by mismanaging the effort to broaden its music mix. The choices that reflect its early taste for the offbeat — like an album from Lizz Wright, a torchy pop singer — are now squeezed in with offerings not unlike those at Wal-Mart, including the latest releases from Alicia Keys and James Blunt. The shift has not been lost on some customers.

Poor old James Blunt, eh? Even The New York Times pokes him with a stick.

Is it really surprising, though? Starbucks is so keen to shore up its bottom line its exploring the idea of a 'value' blend of coffee - if it's happy to sell undrinkable coffee, is it really surprising the chain will also sell unlistenable music?

Still, there's some interesting statistics included in the piece, not least this:

Despite adopting a broader musical approach, Starbucks on average sells only two CDs a store each day at company-owned shops, according to people briefed on its business. Starbucks disputed that figure but declined to provide a different one.

We're not sure that's so surprising - after all, it's primarily a coffee shop, and we'd imagine that a lot of the stores sell no CDs at all (the ones which are sited to serve the grab-and-glug market) - and it's got over 30,000 stores, which still translates as a lot of CDs being sold. We'd actually like to see how well its free track-of-the-day download promotion at the end of last year did.

Coffee shops? Whatever next? Selling online

We suspect it's only half ContactMusic's fault that they've managed to turn out such a rotten article about Erykah Badu's new album, as it looks like they've just reworked a press release, but even so, you'd think they'd have at least read what they were publishing:

ERYKAH BADU is to undertake an innovative new marketing strategy for her forthcoming live album...

Really? What could that be, then?

...she is releasing the LP through branches of Starbucks coffee shops.

Oh. That would be innovative in the sense that it's the first time a live album by Erykah Badu has been marketed in this way. Because haven't Starbucks been flogging albums for about ten years?

Blithely, ContactMusic ctrl-vs the whole thing, including the contention that allowing your album to be sold by one of the major high street forces for music retail is a

daring move

.
Yes; for an artist of Badu's stature to be doing this when usually the chain is forced to rely on untested names like Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell and Alanis Morisette.

Cool Thing would be a great special name for a Frappacino

Thurston Moore has - perhaps unsurprisingly - decided it's wrong to have a pop at Sonic Youth for tying up with Starbucks:

The Starbucks thing was our idea. It was born of frustration, trying to get our label to sell our records. When you're in a band like Sonic Youth that's not on the radio or on TV, you want to try to get your record out there. I saw Beck's record [in Starbucks] and other adult-contemporary CDs that aren't, like, No. 1 pop records, and I just thought there's a large part of our catalog that would be accessible to people. I thought, "Why don't we get some of the people in the media who name-check Sonic Youth to choose their favorite songs, and then put them on a CD?"

Sorry... did he just say "other adult-contemporary CDs"? Did we miss some sort of reclassification of Daydream Nation?

There's no difference between working with Starbucks and working with record labels like Universal and Geffen. It's a knee-jerk reaction from PC watchdogs. I mean, really, which long-distance company do you use for your cellphone? Are you on the grid? If you're off the grid, I'll listen to you.

But... if you're off the grid, you won't be able to contact him! Ha! He's beaten you.

While it's not that disappointing to see the Youth working with Starbucks, it's almost heartbreaking to see Thurston Moore throwing "PC watchdogs" around with a note of contempt, like he was Little Richardjohn.

After all, it's not exactly right to draw parallels between the majors and Starbucks; while the record labels tended to grow by buying out competitors, Starbucks' growth came at the expense of smaller operators, run out of town by the dual challenge of a company able to swamp cities with branches and the economies of scale just not available to small shops, and evil though most major labels are, they've not actively sort to screw the Ethiopian economy out of about ninety million dollars.

Thurston: Starbucks 'no worse' than Universal

Thurston Moore reckons he's surprised at the heat he's getting for placing the new Sonic Youth album through Starbucks:

"I never thought of it as being more radical than recording for Universal Music.

They're both corporations that have ties to things that people find sort of problematic. The compilation came out of the idea that I wanted Rather Ripped to be in Starbucks stores because that's where people were seeing CDs. They aren't going into record stores anymore."

Certainly, as music producers, Starbucks' record seems more positive than any of the big RIAA companies.

Cappuccino Is Next: Sonic Youth deal with Starbucks

Sonic Youth have cooked up a deal with Starbucks for a special compilation, Thurston Moore tells Pitchfork:

We sort of devised this idea of a Sonic Youth record where we asked all these different people to choose their favorite song, people like artists and actors and other musicians and what have you. So all these people, from Jeff Tweedy to Beck to Marc Jacobs to Portia de Rossi to Michelle Williams [laughs], they all chose their favorite songs and wrote a little thing about it. So it's a compilation record of artists choosing songs of Sonic Youth. There's going to be one exclusive song of ours that we'll record, so that's something we have to record.

We really wish when they did this they'd make the band invent a special limited edition coffee as well. We'd like a grande Sonic Youth, we really would.

Skinny singer, latte to go

You'd have thought that Thom Yorke, one of the most anti-corporate musicians, would have been the last person to be in the frame for a deal with Starbucks record label. But then, these are complicated times - is it better to be on EMI, a business which is part of the cartel crushing creativity in the music industry, or Starbucks, a business which is chasing independent cafes and coffee shops out of business and turning every bloody street in the developed world into an exact copy of the next street?

After all, Naomi Klein - whose No Logo inspired them in the first place - has said that she enjoys a Starbucks coffee from time to time. It's all very confusing.

Freshgroundcore: Starbucks launch label

While nobody would begrudge SubPop launching a boutique label, there's not going to be universal delight at the reports that Starbucks is taking the next step: from flogging CDs to manufacturing them.

Starbucks has actually had a music division since acquiring Hear Music in 1999; before Starbucks invested, Hear was trying to push the idea of customers burning bespoke CDs in small booths in its stores. Since then, the brand has been used on a Starbucks-underwritten radio channel on XM. And so, inevitably, it becomes a pressing concern. Equally inevitably, the big labels are scoffing:

[E]xecutives at record companies were doubtful that Starbucks would do any better at breaking new artists than a traditional label.

"They got the retail and marketing distribution to leverage," said one executive who asked not to be named. "But are they going to sell a million records? No, but they probably don't need to."

Geological experts tell us that the resultant "well, duh" generated by this off-the-record quote could be felt as far away as Antarctica - Starbucks approach to music is the same as its approach to the bags of coffee beans it sells in its stores. They're not trying to compete with Makers Mark; its all about selling high-margin, quality stuff and making extra revenue from people calling in to buy a frothy coffee.

There are claims in the New York Times today that they're trying to line up Macca. Again, more derision from a confused, anonymous exec:

"It'll be interesting when they realize it ain't easy putting out records," said another senior record company executive, who asked not to be named. "Are they really taking a chance? On who? Paul McCartney?"

Of course Starbucks are no more likely to put out an edgy queerpunk album by an unknown band from Tuscon than they are to replace their coffees with kumqat root juice. But lets face it, senior record executive, there aren't many RIAA companies who are releasing expectation-confounding confections, are there? And if your banker artists like the McCartneys decide to go and do their work for the Barrista boys in future, what does that do for your financial model? Starbucks' initiative is probably a far more serious threat to the big labels' bottom line than peer to peer networking. Of course, they don't see that.