Starbucks To Allow Customers To Mix On CDs

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Coffee and music go digital

By Darren Waters
BBC News Online in Los Angeles

For those enjoying a digital lifestyle, the latest thing in Los Angeles is a coffee house which lets customers listen to music and mix their own CDs while they sip their cappuccinos.

There is a often a queue for the listening posts
In LA, the digital lifestyle is more than just a buzzword seen in Sunday supplements.

Every other person seems to be sporting an iPod, with its trademark white headphones, and the Apple stores in the city are teeming with people seeking elusive iPod Mini players which have sold out across the US.

The latest addition for the "plugged-in" generation is a Starbucks coffee house which not only boast wireless internet access, which is becoming quite standard in urban outlets, but also a music store with a difference.

The "Hear Music" themed coffee house in sophisticated Santa Monica lets customers browse racks of music as they drink their coffee, but also gives them the opportunity to record compilation CDs of their favourite music.

Limited choice

Customers pull up a stool at one of the banks of touch screen PCs, browse through the selection of music, pick out a design for their album cover and by the time the last dregs of coffee are gone, the CD is ready to take away.

The plan is to set up similar ventures across the world
They can also listen to any of 10,000 songs in the shop's library, but not all are available for use in a personal compilation.

Nena Maldonada, from Venice, California, was in the coffee shop choosing a mix of reggae songs on one of the bank of tablet PCs.

"I'm choosing songs for a gift; it's a great way to pick songs," she said.

"It's pretty easy to use and it totally fits into a digital lifestyle."

Brett Coates, visiting Los Angeles from New Zealand, was impressed with the combination of music and coffee.

"I've never seen anything like this before. You can simply pick the songs you want and then get a CD when you pay to go," he said.

"The range of songs is limited at the moment, but I guess that will improve."

The shop in Santa Monica is the first Starbucks in the world to feature the Hear Music store, but the idea is set to roll out across the world.

It sounds cutting edge, but the concept has been around for decades.

Mix it

Record stores have tried and failed many times to offer customers the chance to produce their own album selections, even back as far as the 1970s.

Choosing the music is a solitary experience
But the concept always struggled, hindered often by a chronic lack of choice, cost and desire in the market.

This time, it could be different.

The advent of digital music has created a generation of people quite used to selecting their own music and having complete control of how they want to buy, mix and listen to music.

A CD of nine songs costs $10.99, which is equivalent to the cost of buying a CD in a record shop, but more expensive than buying tracks online, from iTunes, for example.

The range of music is certainly limited, but record labels are making more tracks available.

Jenene Bentley, who works at the store, said the choice of music was geared to particular tastes.

"It's definitely not Billboard hot 100 chart music," she explained.

The library of tracks caters more for lovers of independent music, singer-songwriters, jazz and funk.

I want my MP3

It feels more like a coffee house inside a record store than truly integrating the two experiences but the demand is certainly there - there is often a queue of people waiting to sit at one of the music stools.

It is also a solitary experience - friends cannot, for example, sit at a table and listen to their own selected playlist of music, before taking away a CD of their afternoon's drinking and chatting.

Many would argue that the compact disc itself is a relic of a time before the digital age of music really began.

There is no provision yet for users of MP3 players to come in and simply download their chosen tracks before taking them away.

"We certainly get asked about that a lot," admits Ms Bentley.

Perhaps that is the next logical step.

Classic Or Dud?