This From Ireland On-Line:

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=213094804&p=zy3x955yx

After the dismal promotion given his last effort, I understand his decision. Capitol took him for granted, and like Sinatra, he just might cost them profits all the way to his last breath.

It might also have something to do with the resent EMI restructuring of Capitol Records.

IMHO, this is significant.

I view Starbucks as an extremely powerful up and coming distribution venue. Look at their grip on culture and the sheer number (and growing!) of outlets. They've also got the best of demos shopping regularly there all the time.

Done right, they would easily compete with what's already out there, able to call the shots like Wal*Mart currently does with so many things.

Missing--
".....the sheer number (and growing!) of outlets...."

S-Bucks is growing?? How?

They just shut the one on 28th and 112th in the Coove down a coupla months ago (shame too, that place for me was like what Cafe' Nervosa was to Frasier!) and rumour has it soon another one here's biting the dust as well. (Not certain which one, but that's what I heard recently............)

And along similar lines--
I wonder if Playnetwork Hear Music is planning to release any of Queen's more obscure recordings?? ;o)

Starbucks in getting into the entertainment in a big way. Their first offering was a movie "Akeelah and the Bee," that came out about a year ago. It's a great wholesome feel good movie. Read it at the link below.

http://motion.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=36765

About Starbucks Entertainment
Starbucks Entertainment's first film offering follows a very successful year for the Company's music strategy. Starbucks Hear Music executed initiatives such as the co-production of the GRAMMY(R) Award-winning Ray Charles Genius Loves Company album, as well as the exclusive offering of the ten year anniversary acoustic recording of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. More recently Starbucks Hear Music co-produced and launched its first global CD release: Herbie Hancock's Possibilities, which is available simultaneously at Starbucks and traditional music retail worldwide, and which has been nominated for two GRAMMY(R)s, marking the second year in a row in which an album Starbucks Hear Music co-released has received multiple GRAMMY(R) nominations. Year one of Starbucks Hear Music's strategy also included co-releasing the first officially sanctioned, professionally produced version of Bob Dylan's rare, historic 1962 "Gaslight" sessions, another Starbucks exclusive, and the unveiling of the Hear Music(TM) Coffeehouses in Miami and San Antonio, which feature the next generation of the Hear Music(TM) media bars, enabling customers to burn a custom CD of their choice from a selection of more than one million digital tracks.

It's a world domination plot by Starbucks; They're also into books now...what's next?

New York Times
March 10, 2007

Disturbing Memoir Outsells Literary Comfort Food at Starbucks

Starbucks prompted plenty of eye-rolling among publishing types last year when it announced that it would inaugurate its program to sell one book at a time from its coffee shops with an already certain best seller, the reliably inoffensive Mitch Albom novel “For One More Day.”

“Really,” cracked the publishing industry blog GalleyCat (mediabistro.com/galleycat), “what better match can there be than Mitch Albom and Starbucks?”

The answer, it turns out, may be Starbucks and the bloody memoir by a former Sierra Leonean child soldier that it chose as its second book selection.

According to sales figures released by Starbucks, “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” by Ishmael Beah, has sold more than 62,000 copies in its first three weeks on sale at the chain, about two thirds of the 92,000 copies that Mr. Albom’s book sold in a full three months.

Indeed, “A Long Way Gone” is poised to outsell Mr. Albom’s book, said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, in a telephone interview from Seattle. “If sales continue the way they do, the trend line points to that,” Mr. Schultz said. “The success of the book, in terms of units sold, is exceeding our expectations.”

It is an unlikely role reversal for Mr. Albom, the popular best-selling author of “Tuesdays With Morrie,” and Mr. Beah, an unknown 26-year-old whose first book has had a huge debut despite its brutal subject matter. In Mr. Albom, Starbucks had picked something safe, an author who was already a household name with a proven track record for turning out books that, while frequently derided as simplistic by critics, were guaranteed best sellers. “For One More Day,” published on Sept. 26 by Hyperion Books, is the homespun story of a wayward son grieving for his dead mother.

The choice “was disappointing because it was a book that was a guaranteed best seller anyway,” said Jonathan Galassi, the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which published “A Long Way Gone” under the Sarah Crichton Books imprint. “It was no challenge to anyone, including them.”

When Starbucks chose Mr. Beah’s memoir as its second book program selection, it seemed a slightly risky item to be placed among other Starbucks merchandise like plush teddy bears and Sheryl Crow CD compilations. “A Long Way Gone” certainly does mesh with a certain globally conscious, humanitarian feeling that Starbucks tries to project. But Mr. Beah’s memoir is also a grim tale full of first-person scenes of poverty and despair, rampant drug use and violent fights with bayonets and machetes.

Starbucks has marketed the book in an approachable package, emphasizing the themes of hope and redemption over its more grisly subject.

“This showed a very interesting side of the program,” said Neil Nyren, the publisher and editor in chief of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a Penguin imprint. “Their choice of this book in the first place showed that they wanted to do something thoughtful, not obvious, a book that they believed in. And the fact that it has sold so well means I’d be surprised if they didn’t continue in this direction.”

Mr. Schultz said Starbucks was tentatively planning on introducing another title in the fall, and the selection process for the third book is already under way. (As with the first two books, Starbucks has enlisted the William Morris Agency in New York to read manuscripts.)

Mr. Beah’s book has also benefited from glowing reviews in The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post, a profile of the author in The Los Angeles Times and an interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

According to Nielsen BookScan, “A Long Way Gone” sold 80,000 copies through Sunday, a number that encompasses figures from Starbucks and most bookstores and online retailers, but not mass-market outlets like Wal-Mart.

Last week it made its debut at No. 2 on The New York Times’s hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, leapfrogging over “The Innocent Man” by John Grisham and “About Alice” by Calvin Trillin. But Mr. Beah didn’t need Starbucks’s help in achieving best-seller status. The New York Times best-seller list, for instance, is compiled without tracking sales from Starbucks.

Still, “A Long Way Gone” has arguably gained momentum from its association with Starbucks and its presence in more than 6,500 of its outlets. “The biggest thing that’s going on is word of mouth,” said Sarah Crichton, the publisher of Sarah Crichton Books. “This really is the case of the rising tide lifts all boats.”