Starbucks Music Might Be A Success After All
from the then-again,-maybe-not dept
Michael Shipp (Xueilonox) writes "Everyone thought the ridiculous price of CDs would hinder the success of Starbucks music stores. Ray Charles latest CD owes a lot of its success to Starbucks. Since it's behind the wall, I also wrote a post." There's actually a bit more to this story, so it's not so clear that Starbucks' music is a success story. In this case, it was an actual CD that they were selling in stores. These are the CDs that they have playing in the background and have a stack on the counter as you check out. Such CDs have done quite well in retail settings including Starbucks, Pottery Barn and other modern retailers. That's quite different from setting up a computer kiosks with expensive songs to download and burn to a CD. So, this type of success doesn't necessarily translate to the other kind. In fact, previous Starbucks' albums (usually mixes) have done quite well in the past too.
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Makes Sense
Other than people recommending music to me (and usually pretty bad recommendations), hearing something at a music store or a borders/starbucks is more often than not how I run across a new act worth exploring.
Starbucks probably works well because even though the age/race/sex of the customer is widely different, there is a general commonality of paying extra for the atmosphere and coffee. These are good consumer types with money seeking out a coffee shop atmosphere which gives them a reasonable shot of targetting the 'right' music for them.
There aren't many places where this kind of thing would work but Starbucks makes sense.
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Re: Makes Sense
"Hey guys! I just discovered this neat new band called the Flaming Lips! They're so cool and underground....."
Morons.
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starbucks
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