Starbucks and music

[sidewinder]

I heard Grachan Moncur III 'Evolution' in a French elevator last year. 10,000000 cool points !

[Niko]

i like the anonymity of Starbucks.. unlike in an ordinary cafe where you have to talk to the waiter every once in a while you can go to starbucks spend a little on a decent and huge black coffee and then they let you mind your own business for a few hours, and usually the seats are much better than at mcdonalds... i often go there when i need a place to work in a foreign city... the music varies widely, sometimes they indeed play a hard bop compilation, last few times i wasn't very lucky and they played compilations that varied far to widely between genres for my taste with lots of not so nice music in between...

[crisp]

I don't know about Starbucks around the world, but in the UK practically anywhere is cheaper for coffee -- and better tasting in my opinion. I stopped going partly because I was tired of it and partly because I was spending a fortune there (it must be the only chain not to do loyalty cards as well). Cafe Nero is my favourite chain, but I'm rarely near one. The muffins in Starbucks are very nice, though.

[Niko]

i always drink the "coffee of the week" since i wouldn't want anything that has milk in it anyway, don't go often enough to remember the price and i can't say that it tastes especially splendid but the price is definitely right... ( something like 1.60 to 2.80 Euro depending on the size with the smallest being still substantial, it's more on the cheap than on the expensive side, definitely...)

[A Lark Ascending]

I wish they had no music on at all.

The only time I find myself in one is if I'm caught between two places with an hour's gap. If I'm with people I'm not listening. If I'm on my own I'd rather plug the iPod in.

I was in a pub in Nottingham a couple of years back and they played the whole of KofB. A few years before that I was in shopping mall in Norway where Miles Ahead was being played. Strange!

[Hot Ptah]

I talked to a waitress at a restaurant in Kansas City about the great hard bop playing as background music. I wondered who had such deteiled knowledge of jazz at the restaurant.

She explained that the company which enforces the payment of music royalties from public places, requires such detailed paperwork of all background music played, that many public places just sign up with a business which provides them with the background music and takes care of all of the royalty paperwork and payments. So the song choices are not made by the public place at all. The public place doesn't care what music is played, as long as the royalty paperwork and payments are handled by the third party music provider.

She said that her restaurant signed a contract with Muzak, which has gone into a lot more than its old easy listening background music, and now provides entire days of programming of old music to businesses, along with the record keeping and royalty payment service.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Last night, a friend of mine who owns a food cafeteria/buffet located on the ground floor of a DC office building, was telling me that he signed on with the company to sell their coffee, etc. They furnished the machines, cups and all the stuff that goes with it...only to suddenly pull the plug a full 2 months down the road when they suddenly discovered that the place actually has a 2nd entrance. The first (and major) point of access is the corridor that snakes around the inside of the building. There's a street level entrance as well (we're not talking a major thoroughfare -- a Pennsylvania Ave or anything --just a sleepy 'lil side street). It was this street level entrance that was the dealbreaker. He doesn't understand why they freaked out about that......quite frankly, neither do I?

[danasgoodstuff]

Perhaps they had a contract with someone else close by (the're everywhere) that precluded any other vendor with street access within a certain distance?

[Guest Bill Barton]

Well, Starbucks as a rule does indeed play some pretty good music in their stores. Even though I live smack dab in the middle of their home turf I rarely go into a Starbuckies. In fact, I used to hate their coffee, always seemed over-roasted (a.k.a. burned) to me. They appear to have improved somewhat in that respect recently. The way things are going it may not be long before they're the only brick-and-mortar place to buy CDs!

[White Lightning]

When we stayed in DC I used to sit at Starbucks a lot. It was the best place to prepare my lessons with comfortable couches, good music and no hassle from waiters etc.

The one thing I didn't get was the coffee. It wasn't that good (too burnt and acid for my taste), HUGE jugs, sometimes with all kinda creams toppings etc. and the price was ridiculous - I remember it was 3.5-4$ for a cappuccino(!)

Here in Israel the espresso bar culture is very strong with a strong preference to Italian style coffee. Prices are similar to Italy (around 1 Euro for an espresso, 2 euros for cappuccino). After all this, no one was really surprised that Starbucks Israel folded after a year or two. No one misses it here.

[B. Goren.]

Here in Israel the espresso bar culture is very strong with a strong preference to Italian style coffee. Prices are similar to Italy (around 1 Euro for an espresso, 2 euros for cappuccino). After all this, no one was really surprised that Starbucks Israel folded after a year or two. No one misses it here.

In Tel-Aviv the prices are similar to DC...

[White Lightning]

Here in Israel the espresso bar culture is very strong with a strong preference to Italian style coffee. Prices are similar to Italy (around 1 Euro for an espresso, 2 euros for cappuccino). After all this, no one was really surprised that Starbucks Israel folded after a year or two. No one misses it here.

In Tel-Aviv the prices are similar to DC...

Well, in 2002-2003 4USD = 20NIS, nowadays it's only 15NIS...

[ejp626]

A bit off target, but I thought this was a fairly cool quiz: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/07/starbucks_locations_quiz_name_the_city_by_its_starbucks_stores.html

(You have to identify cities by their Starbucks outlets.) I did ok - 14 out of 20. There were two or three that I probably should have gotten. I certainly could have done better had I had an atlas at hand, but just wanted to try it freestyle...