Score another for the Hear Music's quest for a boomer-friendly roster: Joni Mitchell joins Paul McCartney as the second signing to Starbucks' label, releasing her first LP in nine years, Shine, in an overpriced coffee shop near you. The AP describes the appeal vis a vis Macca's latte-shop success:
McCartney's album "Memory Almost Full" came out last month and was played relentlessly at Starbucks franchises, where listeners could purchase it with their coffee. The disc has sold 447,000 copies, 45 percent of them in Starbucks stores, the company said.
The new venture has attracted interest from veteran artists both because the music business is collapsing around them, and their fans are much more likely to be spending time in Starbucks these days than in music stores.
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Mitchell wrote nine of the 10 songs on "Shine," the exception being an adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling poem "If."
She described it as "as serious a work as I've ever done" with some dark lyrics.
Of the names brewing it the rumor mill, we honestly put the odds on sweet baby James. Alas it's Ms. Mitchell, and Hear Music is just getting started, promising one more signing this year and eight more in '08. And then there's the celeb-curated (and new-tune-including) Sonic Youth comp, which Thurston said was aimed toward giving "the casual consumer" access to music "more readily."
Look for Joni's Shine on 9/25.
