Mixing Coffee With Music

On the new Starbucks menu: cappuccino, muffin, and jazz music!
Starbucks has teamed up with their Hear Music brand to open a new innovative coffeehouse cum music listening bar. The newly opened Hear Music Coffeehouse in Santa Monica, USA, is a revolutionary record store where Starbucks customers can enjoy their favorite Starbucks beverages while creating their own custom-made CD compilation in just a few minutes. The price: at JUST $6.95 for five songs and $1 for each additional tune!
In the coffeehouse, customers can relax to overhead music and live performances, or read and listen to exclusive artist interviews. The CD burning service allows customers to burn full-length albums and personalized compilations from a comprehensive digital library of over 250,000 tracks. The listening bar has 70 interactive Tablet PC-based listening stations powered by HP and over 10,000 CDs available from artists dating back to the 1990s. The diversity is also great! From Yo-Yo Ma to the Rolling Stones, one can find them all.
The Hear Music Coffeehouse plans to bring music into people’s lives by helping them discover great music from young emerging artistes, as well as those artistes outside of mainstream (Source: Starbucks press release).
Let’s Get Down To Business…
The Starbucks brand is defined by innovation in products and services that preserves and enhances the coffehouse experience such as the exclusive music compilations, the Starbucks Card and Wi-Fi access. If you’re in the F&B industry, you should look out for innovations that can transform the way your customers enjoy their dining experience. Not only should you strive to serve great food and drinks, but you should also try to keep a nice ambience of your store and create a unique service that sets you apart from close competitors.
Also, digital music is projected to grow from $256 million in downloads this year to $2.1 billion in 2007 (Source: Forrester Research). Already, music distribution is undergoing a major transformation, giving rise to new opportunities to explore ways in which industries can enrich the experiences of their customers by taking advantage of the potential of digital music. Do take note of that!
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