I don't think that Starbucks' goal was to revive album purchasing for the music industry. It was a risk free move on Bucks' part and had zero effect on the brand.

People don't go to Starbucks for music, they go to Starbucks for over-priced bad-tasting coffee in environmentally-UNfriendly styrofoam cups so they can make a statement about their own bad taste in general. But since the advent of doodads like the MP3 player, which even a dinosaur like me has, my suspicion is, the music 'album' is going the way of the dodo bird - and most dinosaurs - and it makes no difference to either Starbucks or album sales for Starbucks to offer albums for sale. Might take one's mind off the taste of their coffee, maybe, but it would have to be a pretty good album....

Styrofoam cups? Be sure you do your homework and examine what the brand is really doing before making sweeping and grossly inaccurate statements. No styrofoam there!

Point-of-Sale benefits from having product mixture was at a point successful for Starbucks, especially around holiday sales periods. The Apple co-op deal to integrate iTunes, WiFi, and coffee sales was a new "brand experience" that had not been fully or successfully implemented before. I think both Starbucks and Apple did a fine job. But again, not all ideas are sure fire wins, even from highly successful marketeer firms like Starbucks and Apple. To be fully successful customers would have to have buy-in for the experience of getting coffee and listening to music on their computer or MP3 player while in the store. Kiosk sales of CDs is nothing new, even Mom & Pop shops do it because there is still something about last minute POP sales that people do from sheer impulse.

Regarding the music industry, I think it a bit too much to rest the responsibility on anyone's shoulders during this period of consumer market transition for how we get our music media, or any media for that matter. It is really a survival of the fittest in a space that demands adaptation and evolution of ideas and themes. I applaud Starbucks for trying to differentiate their brand and doing well by customers to offer more than coffee. I think it a false pretense to believe the business model for Starbucks Music in-store experience was anything of a ploy to boost CD sales from the failing and collapsing brick-n-mortar record store chains.

I think one of the key problems with Starbucks' failed music venture has to do with their self-titled "3rd Place" label. (The 1st and 2nd Places being the home and office, respectively). I have never bought into the idea of Starbucks as a place where average people go to relax/surf the web/whatever, and I really don't think that a commercially-based 3rd Place will ever thrive. The closest thing I can think of that's analogous is teenagers going to the mall to hang out/buy stuff/whatever. Starbucks is smart to go back to its coffee roots.

Starbucks is more than coffee, which is why they offer music sales. I am a coffee fanatic, consuming 6-10 cups per day on average. I don't like Starbucks coffee, but I love Starbucks so I began drinking lattes and machiatos. Visiting a Starbucks is an experience. There's a wonderful aroma, warm greeting, good people and *ahh* exquisite music playing in the background. The move to sell music was more than likely generated by the relentless requests of "what song is this?" from store visitors to staff. The miss was in SELLING cds and offering FREE downloads.

A better approach would have been to have a live stream from the Starbucks radio channel offering the ability for visitors to download the song on the wi-fi connection or purchase it with their coffee and receive an iTunes receipt.

Coffee and music belong together as an experience, but require a unique approach profit from each other.

The Times article quotes an anonymous music exec who mentions that by adding so many titles to their stores' catalog, the music lost its "event" feeling. It'd be like if Oprah had 15 books of the week every week. It basically lost the initial element that made it cool and successful. I think that's an interesting idea. Like Brendan says, they're smart to go back to their coffee roots.

All the push for music content in the store didn't work well for me. Free songs on iTunes, or access to wifi and browsing for music on my iPhone didn't pan out either. It does seem that Starbucks is however doing a great job at coffee, since I hated coffee until I first tried Starbucks in Santa Monica back in '91. I'll just play my tunes on my iPhone / iPod while drinking the drink of the century at Starbucks. I only think the brand was very slightly diluted. I actually enjoy watching companies do things that may be risky.

I think you all have some great thoughts... I have been using www.mystarbucksidea.com to voice my opinion since I am a big patron of Starbucks... I go to Starbucks for the experience...

Starbucks --- with its flavoured milks (where's the coffee rather than the "" coffee "" ? ) dreary, passe environents and down at heel service is a must-to-avoid London/NY/LA locale ... in a classic mis-move the over-extended group failed to maintain focus on its core success factors and went for such inessential diversions as music CDs to give depth to its world ... it failed and we are not going back.

I like listening to Joni Mitchell over the Starbucks sound system while sipping my Americano, but I'm not about to buy a re-packaged Joni Mitchell greatest hits CD...or a compilation of new rockers doing Joni covers.

Not gonna happen.
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