Starbucks Launches Music To Go

Starbucks Corp. this week launches a retail music service that will roll into 2,500 stores by 2006.

Customers choose from 250,000 songs listed on a Hewlett-Packard tablet computer. They can either listen to the music while dining at Starbucks or burn songs onto a CD for a cost of $7 for five songs or $13 for an album. Starbucks has licensing agreements with a number of record companies, BusinessWeek reported.

The venture, called Hear Music Café, leverages Starbucks' weekly traffic of 30 million consumers and could be one of the most ambitious efforts so far to bring music download technology into bricks-and-mortar retail. Seven music retailers reportedly are collaborating on bringing digital downloads to their stores via a joint initiative called Echo.

Hewlett-Packard Corp. provides equipment for listening and burning CDs. Starbucks' target audience is current high-volume customers, typically middle-aged late-adopters rather than younger music fans.

Custom-made CDs also extend Starbucks' CD-sampler sales and live-music events, used to round out the in-store experience as Starbucks broadens its brand beyond coffee. (Starbucks bought HearMusic, a chain of music stores, in 1999 and used that as a springboard for its current music offerings.)