Starbucks to launch music label

Starbucks is solidifying its expansion into the entertainment business with the launch ofa record label, the global specialty coffee retailer announced Monday.

Starbucks said it will partner with Concord Music Group, which helped the coffee giant successfully sell the posthumous Ray Charles release Genius Loves Company, for its new Hear Music label, which will be based in Los Angeles.

The new label will sign emerging and established artists and musicians and sell records both in Starbucks and other retail stores.

Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, will head the new endeavour and work with Concord Music president Glen Barros.

"This is a pretty powerful new platform, when you can reach 44 million customers per week through Starbucks stores," Barros said of the Seattle-based coffee company, which has approximately 13,000 locations worldwide.

Rumours have already been floating that former Beatle Paul McCartney is set to leave longtime label partner Capitol Records and will be one of the first artists to sign with the new Starbucks label.

Entertainment with your latte?

Since buying California-based music retailer Hear Music in 1999, Starbucks has been making increasingly greater inroads into entertainment distribution.

The coffee chain had its biggest success with the non-exclusive sale of the Grammy-winning Charles album in 2004. Starbucks ultimately accounted for approximately a quarter of the album's four million copies sold.

However, the company's exclusive deals to sell recent albums by Alanis Morissette and Bob Dylan drew fire from traditional musicretailers, some of whom temporarily pulled albums by the two artists off their shelves in protest.

A later deal to sell an album of rare tracks by the Rolling Stones was non-exclusive, with the release available at Starbucks locations and traditional music retailers at the same time.

Last year, Starbucks expanded its reach into movies and books, signing a deal to jointly market and distribute the family-friendly spelling bee drama Akeelah and the Bee and offering bestselling author Mitch Albom's novel One More Day at its counters.