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Hear Music is the brand name of Starbucks' retail music concept and record label. Hear Music began as a catalog company in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1990 before being purchased by Starbucks in 1999.

The Hear Music brand currently has four components: the music that each location plays and accompanying XM radio channel (XM 75); in-store CD sales, including Starbucks exclusives; specially-branded retail stores (which opened shortly after the catalog was formed) and a label distributing their own recordings.

Starbucks' second Hear Music store at the South Bank development adjacent to the River Walk in downtown San Antonio, Texas.

As of December 2006, there are four Starbucks Hear Music Coffeehouses: Santa Monica, California, on the Third Street Promenade; San Antonio, Texas, on the River Walk; Miami, Florida, on the Lincoln Road shopping promenade; and Bellevue, Washington, in Bellevue Square.^[1] There is also a Hear Music Store in Berkeley, California. Ten Starbucks locations also have Hear Music "media bars," a service which uses tablet-based PCs to allow customers to create their own mix CDs. The media bars are currently located in Seattle and in Austin, Texas.

Currently, Starbucks is one of the top 40 music-oriented retailers and has flourished selling music. Its biggest success was Ray Charles' Grammy-winning Genius Loves Company, where 2.86 million records were sold in total; 25% of those were sold at Starbucks locations.

In 2005, Starbucks announced a partnership with singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette. In an exclusive six-week deal, Morissette announced that she would retail an acoustic version of Jagged Little Pill in Starbucks stores only. The acoustic version was released on June 13, 2005 in order to celebrate the groundbreaking album's tenth anniversary.

On March 12, 2007 Starbucks and Concord Music Group launched the Hear Music record label.^[2] The company's first artist signing was Paul McCartney, on March 21, 2007.^[3]

The music section in Chapters, a Canadian retail chain, was at one time a licensed version of the Hear Music concept. The company no longer uses the brand name.

1. ^ Harris, Craig. "Starbucks opens Hear Music shop in Bellevue", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2006-11-24. Retrieved on 2007-03-22.
2. ^ Business Wire (2007-03-12). Starbucks Launches Hear Music Record Label. Press release. Retrieved on 2007-03-22.
3. ^ Woodward, Curt. "McCartney signed to new Starbucks label", Associated Press, 2007-03-21. Retrieved on 2007-03-22.

• Hear Music | The Sound of Starbucks
• Hear Music on XM Radio