Love your Starbucks coffee? Maybe those awesome breakfast muffins and wraps they have? Yeah, I do too. I also love the music they usually play in Starbucks, and wind up wishing I could get my hands on it. I’ve been known to peer at the CDs that most Starbucks have for sale while my coffee is being prepared, and to look interestedly at the iTunes gift cards that usually live in front of or next to the registers.
Well, according to the fine folks at the Cult of Mac blog, Starbucks is tired of taking the monetary hit that comes with trying to sell physical CDs in this market, and all of those things – with the exception obviously of the coffee and snacks – will be gone from most Starbucks stores by September. So say goodbye to all of the Motown compliations and Jazz CDs that adorn the displays next to the cashier.
The move isn’t entirely unexpected; Starbucks’s financial position has floundered a bit last year, and executives and shareholders are eager for the company to focus on what it knows how to do exceptionally well, and that’s make coffee. They’re not particularly interested in being the potential harbinger for a new age in decentralized music sales, for example.
That being said, Starbucks said they are interested in possibly taking their music sales online, a possibilty I would strongly encourage them to look into. I’ve always loved the music in Starbucks stores, and while I can’t say I frequently purchased their CDs (thus proving the point that they should stop selling them), I have lingered in a Starbucks with my laptop long enough grooving to a song that I would consider hitting up the iTunes music store and downloading a song from a Starbucks featured music page if the song I were hearing in-store were available.
[ Silicon Alley Insider :: Starbucks (SBUX) Dumping CDs, iTunes Gift Cards (AAPL) ]
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