You can sip your favorite latte and burn a CD with your favorite music at the new Starbucks-run coffeehouse in Santa Monica, CA.
That combination makes perfect sense to the Seattle-based company, which has placed a kiosk in the store where both good coffee and great music are now produced.
Starbucks calls the new-concept cafe the Hear Music Coffee House, named after its chain of four music stores. Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard developed the technology to create the in-store CDs, including 68 tablet-style portable computers that customers will use to select the music they want burned.
"Part of the reason for doing this is there is a lot of excitement about going digital," said Don MacKinnon, vice president of music and entertainment of Starbucks in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News. "You can make your own compilation of songs from hundreds of thousands of choices."
Customers may browse music and videos stored on the tablet PCs, which are touch-screen laptops. They then can order the songs they would like to put on a CD. Within three minutes, the store's computer will create the CD and the customer can take it home.
The cost runs $11.99 for a 10-song CD, and $12.95 for a complete album. The computer will allow someone to choose their own graphics for the CD and put their name and a label on the disk as well.
Through Hear Music, Starbucks has made licensing pacts with four of the five major record labels: Sony, Warner Music, Universal and BMI. Those agreements allow consumers to pick songs from different artists and mix them on the same CD. Starbucks is still negotiating with the fifth big label, BMG.
MacKinnon said Starbucks will be watching the pilot Hear Music operation closely. If it proves popular, the company will build more Hear Music stores and add CD-burning capability to more of its own Starbucks coffeehouses. Already, Starbucks has plans to equip 10 Starbucks coffeehouses in Seattle with the CD-burning kiosks.
