Hear Music

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Hear Music is the brand name of Starbucks' retail music concept. Hear Music began as a catalog company in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1990 before being purchased by Starbucks in 1999.

The Hear Music brand currently has three components: the music that each location plays and accompanying XM radio channel (XM 75); in-store CD sales, including Starbucks exclusives; and specially-branded retail stores (which opened shortly after the catalog was formed).

Starbucks' second Hear Music store at the South Bank development adjacent to the River Walk in downtown San Antonio, Texas.

As of April 2006, there are three Starbucks Hear Music Coffeehouses: Santa Monica, California on the Third Street Promenade, San Antonio, Texas on the River Walk, and Miami, Florida in South Beach. There is also a Hear Music Store in Berkeley, California. Ten Starbucks locations also have Hear Music "media bars," a service which uses tablet-based PCs to allow customers to create their own mix CDs. The media bars are currently located in Seattle and in Austin, Texas.

Currently, Starbucks is one of the top 40 music-oriented retailers and has flourished selling music. Its biggest success was Ray Charles' Grammy-winning Genius Loves Company, where 2.86 million records were sold in total; 25% of those were sold at Starbucks locations.

In 2005, Starbucks announced a partnership with singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette. In an exclusive six-week deal, Morissette announced that she would retail an acoustic version of Jagged Little Pill in Starbucks stores only. The acoustic version was released on June 13, 2005 in order to celebrate the groundbreaking album's tenth anniversary.

The music section in Chapters, a Canadian retail chain, was at one time a licensed version of the Hear Music concept. The company no longer uses the brand name.

[edit] External links

• Hear Music Coffeehouse
• Hear Music on XM Radio