- Paul McCartney has confirmed a one-album deal with Starbucks' Hear Music label; in addition to being sold in the chain's 4.2 kajillion stores, the new album—due in early June—will be made available to other retailers. McCartney's
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard bored approximately 533,000 listeners, according to Nielsen SoundScan. [
NYT]
- Borders is scaling back its brick-and-mortar outlets, and will sell or franchise its 73 overseas superstores. The chain also plans to reduce the number of CDs it sells, and is planning new "digital centers" in which customers can download music. As Borders' CFO notes: "We are looking to get into the downloading business." And why not? It's going so well these days! [
WSJ]
- Stagecoach, the countrified Coachella spin-off, will offer 3,000 reserved seats set up by the front of the stage, which will allow Willie Nelson to wander off mid-set and take a nap under a lawn chair. [
LA Times]
Idolator
Say goodbye to those days when you could pick up an Adele CD with your Caramel Frappucino: Starbucks will dump almost all of its in-store music offerings over the next three months, according to sources. This news shouldn't come as much of a surprise, given that the coffee company has been 
As may you may have heard, Sonic Youth has decided to skip the traditional best-of route, instead getting famous friends like Mike D, Radiohead and Eddie Vedder to pick less familiar, more personal choices like "100%," "Kool Thing," and "Teen Age Riot." Only six of the fifteen older titles selected have never received a video treatment, and one of those is "Expressway To Yr Skull." This basically leaves "Stones," "Tuff Gnarl," "Rain On Tin," "Tom Violence" and "The World Looks Red" as genuinely surprising tracks to find on a SY comp, so thank you Allison Anders, Dave Eggers, Flea, Gus Van Sant, and Chloe Sevigny. Hits Are For Squares? Wouldn't a more accurate title have been Starpower? Let's attempt to deduce the curators' logic.
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