Starbucks is about to launch a chain of a music-centric cafes, called Hear Music Coffeehouses. Customers will be able to create their own music compilations from a digital library of about 150,000 tracks and burn them to CDs. Hewlett-Packard Tablet PCs will be used in the stores, along with listening stations, where consumers will be able to listen to music before purchasing it. The first five songs -- including a labeled CD and jewelled case -- will cost $6.99. Each additional track thereafter will cost $1.
The first location opens this week in Santa Monica. Later this Spring the service will be made available at 10 of Starbucks existing locations in Seattle, and at 2,500 of other locations nationally in the next couple years.
Why is it that large corporations that start new types of music-sales schemes always tend to fire things off with absurdly expensive price tags? It seems to me that if Starbuck's charged, say, US$2.00 for the first 10 songs, then US$.20 for each additional song, they might actually get people to start using this scheme and they'd still make big profits. Their own greed dooms the project.
Posted by: sean@cheesebikini.com | June 23, 2004 at 02:20 PM