Who decides what music is played at Starbucks?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “sirius xm coffee house playlist“
Who decides what music is played at Starbucks?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “sirius xm coffee house playlist“
UPDATE 2018: Starbucks has been using Spotify in-store (and via its app) since sunsetting Hear Music.
ORIGINAL ANSWER, 2014:
The music at Starbucks is serviced by Hear Music, which was acquired in 1999 by CEO Howard Schultz to become an in-house operation.
Hear Music was, as far back as at least 1990, a newsletter/catalog of recommended music for sale (I still have several copies from my free subscription as it was quite good for the time and an commendable companion to Rhino’s catalog). Then it evolved into retail music stores until the founder sold to Starbucks. Since then it has become their entertainment division: music played in the stores and a record label partnership with Concord Records, which originally made its name mainly in West Coast jazz and latin jazz of the ’70s and ’80s.
Hear Music creates song playlists for channels, which are played on digital jukeboxes in the stores.
As for their five-year plan for music strategies, you may find this slideshow of interest from 2011: Starbucks Digital Music Case Analysis
It’s somewhat different at every store! In my store we have a few playlists that are pre-approbed to play, and the shift supervisor at the time can choose it.
The in-house “music nerds” like Holly Hinton and David Legry. Music has been a major piece of Starbucks experience since the start and the company strived to elevate the experience with technology.
In 1999, Starbucks Corp, acquired Hear Music music store and turned it into a branded coffeehouse. A year later, they established a record label as well. During the acquisition of the music store, the company brought on-board professional music curators.
In the Fast Company article , they describe how the selection takes place and what music plays where and when.
For example, in the morning hours, you would hear classical or jazz music, while in the afternoon it could switch to pop or alt-country. During the holidays, naturally, you would hear season-themed sounds.
The most important part of the selection is it’s relevance to the Starbucks brand. The curators pick the songs based on their imagination or intuition. They asked themselves how a particular song would sound like in a beautiful coffeehouse or what would make a customer go “Ohh, I like this song. Who is this?”. In which case, they can Shazam it or take a look in the Starbucks mobile app and save it on a Spotify playlist.
The playlists slightly vary from region to region so coffeehouse still has some sort of its own localized music experienced while in general, all music has to carry and tie-into the Starbucks brand experience.
Starbucks has an in-house team of music professionals that handpick the music you hear in Starbucks stores. http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/entertainment
The in house team at Starbucks headquarters picks it, but that doesn’t stop baristas from occasionally changing the tunes 😉