Starbucks Dumps A Venti Latte Over Its Hopes Of Being In The Music Business

Starbucks is turning over the day-to-day management of its record label, Hear Music, to the Concord Group, and Hear Music head Ken Lombard has left the company “to pursue other business interests,” according to a statement from the coffee conglomerate. Hear Music, which was launched in 2007, made a splash when it signed Paul McCartney for the album Memory Almost Full, which debuted on the album charts at No. 3 last June. But subsequent releases by the likes of Kenny G and Joni Mitchell didn’t fare as well, and murmurings that the music division had lost its demographic way, coupled with an overall bleak outlook for the second quarter of ’08, made the divestiture a likely inevitabilty. [Puget Sound Business Journal]