A Starbucks Experiment

[Nene]

What's your Starbucks coffee order? (Tell me HERE)
A campaign to invite Starbucks to support local independent music

Starbucks is music cool. So cool that Apple got in bed with them. Previews of the new Starbucks ordering system QuickOrder looks so fresh it makes me want to buy an iphone. Of course if you already have an iphone and used it while you're waiting for your coffee to be served, you would've noticed that your iphone gave you information on the song currently playing in the store, complete with a BUY link. Integration at its best.

Starbucks is crazy profitable. Obviously. Here's a known fact. The Starbucks franchise in the Philippines is owned by ONE family, the Tantocos. There are about 127 Starbucks stores in the Philippines alone. It is so lucrative that the Tantocos refuse to franchise it to anyone outside their family. Monopoly? One things for sure, the Filipino people were never a coffee community until the Tantocos opened their first Starbucks store in Metro Manila. They're now so addicted they're coffee costs more than what we would pay for here in the USA and they've got more selections like the COFFEE JELLY.

Starbucks support independent music. Their label, Hear Music, signed an independent artist, Paul McCartney. Hmm. They also had an unsigned band competition last year called Starbucks Music Maker Competition. Here's the prize list:

Semifinalist Package

• $50 Starbucks Gift card
• Space on Radio Free Goombah Music Player
• $200 American Express Gift Card from OurStage

Winner Package

• Hotel and airfare to attend the Kauai Music Festival*, sponsored by BMI.
• $500 Gift Card from Starbucks
• Two days of studio time with an Engineer at Q Division
• Promotion of winner on Radio Free Goombah Free Music Fridays
• Professional publicity/radio campaign values at $1,000 with a leading music industry promoter courtesy of OurStage

To enter this competition, each had to pay a fee of $10. Prize and competition cost covered by the profits from fees and advertising? Maybe.

It's an uphill battle to get TRUE indie musician albums in Starbucks stores or even their XM radio cafe. And I'm not talking about indie musicians that are signed to Concord Music Group or Hidden Beach Recordings. I'm talking about those extremely talented and self-funded artists much like those you find here at the Blowout Lounge. In the last 24 hours, I personally bought 6 cups of coffee. How much have you bought? How many of us, Starbucks addicts, are out there? Now match that with how little Starbucks' efforts are in TRULY promoting and supporting independent music. My take is that their efforts thus far have been at least a 100 caffeine shots short.

I just spent $20 on Starbucks today. Starbucks, what have you done for me lately?

The Experiment: Tell me what your Starbucks order is and how frequent do you buy it? I will compile all this and run some estimates on Starbuck's contribution to local musicians and feed back a report to you at the end of 2008. Hopefully, Starbucks gets a hold of it and actually start supporting local music.

Note: If you know of other ways Starbucks is giving back to local music, please comment and let me know.