Starbucks will begin rolling out its in-store CD burning
service in its US outlets next week.
The company will install its Hear Music media bars at 45 of
coffee houses in Seattle and Austin by the end of November
The Hear Music media bars will feature the necessary hardware
and software, provided by Hewlett-Packard, for customers to search
Starbucks' digital song library, choose and listen to tracks and
burn them to a CD. CDs whose song lists are compiled by customers
will cost $8.99 (£4.99) for the first seven tracks and $0.99 per
additional track.
Customers will also be able to purchase full-length albums at
prices that are similar to what conventional retail outlets charge.
They will be able to burn these albums off the digital song library
or buy them in the standard shrink-wrapped format if they are in
stock at the store.
Starbucks implemented the first Hear Music media bar in March in
a Santa Monica coffee house.
Its library has some 150,000 songs. The HP equipment powering
the media bars includes tablet PCs, workstations, printers and
networking wares. Customers operate the service via
touch-screen-equipped tablet PCs and headphones.
Specifically, each Starbucks location will have several HP
Tablet PC TC1100s with headphones and without keyboards: customers
will use a stylus to interact with the machines' user interface via
a touch-screen monitor. The PCs will feature a core custom-made
application which will let the user search for music, listen to
tracks and burn CDs.
Meanwhile, the media bars will also have an HP xw4100
workstation for the actual creation and burning of the CDs, while
the printing of CD art is done on an HP Business Inkjet 9670
Printer. HP's services unit developed the system's custom software
on a Microsoft platform.
Juan Carlos Perez writes for IDG News Service