Ah, you see, coffee companies may be occasionally interesting in dabbling in music, but when their share price takes a tumble all energies return to getting that milk frothed, and the record label gets sidelined. Starbucks has announced it is downsizing its entertainment division, and is transferring its record label, Hear Music, over to its partner in the venture, US independent the Concord Music Group.
The coffee chain has been dabbling in music for a while now, recognising that coffee drinking consumers may be persuaded to buy carefully selected and mainly classic artist CDs while getting their morning cappuccino. They stepped up their music ambitions last year by launching Hear Music as a fully fledged record label, and grabbed the headlines by reaching a deal with Paul McCartney and releasing his album 'Memory Almost Full'.
But with the coffee conglom going through a tricky time financially, they announced yesterday that they were handing most of their music operations over to Concord, while the company's entertainment boss Ken Lombard will leave the firm. They will still dabble in entertainment projects, though they will be more digitally focused, shown by the decision to put their entertainment department under Chief Technology Officer Chris Bruzzo.
It's not clear whether the Concord managed Hear Music will still be able to use the Starbucks café network as a distribution platform for selling CDs and promoting downloads from artists signed to the label - that being at the core of the whole venture presumably they will. Though Starbucks are known to keen to do more book based promotions moving forward, presumably recognising that customers may be persuaded to buy carefully selected books while getting their morning cappuccino.