Starbucks To Stop Selling CDs

Even if you wanted to buy a CD, it's getting more and more difficult as retail music stores everywhere continue to close. Starbucks is joining that lot by ceasing to sell CDs and selling off all of its inventory next month. It will stop selling them completely at the end of March.

Starbucks 21,000 stores sold 3.6 million units last year worth $65 million. The coffee giant limited its inventory to only 20 titles or less at a time, and most of these were designed to fit the Starbucks brand.

The company had an exclusive deal with Concord Music Group to supply titles by everyone from Paul McCartney, Diana Krall, Tony Bennett and Alanis Morissette, among others. It also featured a limited number of current hit titles as well, such as Taylor Swift's 1989 and the Frozen soundtrack.

According to a rep from Starbucks, the company will remain involved in music, but only in its digital form, although there was nothing specific about how that will be implemented.

CD sales dropped 15% last year and this year the drop may be even steeper. That was probably going to be the case even if Starbucks had continued selling the format, since its sales amounted to less than 1% of the total CD total in the US.

It's just another sign of the times that the music world we live in is now a digital place.

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