Not satisfied with lattes and frappuccinos, Starbucks is venturing ever further into selling cultural products.

An excerpt from the NYT article:

WHEN Bette Gottfried, a 48-year-old regular at a Starbucks in Ardsley, N.Y., saw that her favorite coffeehouse was promoting a film, she wasn’t immediately interested. “At first I was leery,” said Ms. Gottfried, dressed in workout clothes, wearing her hair in a ponytail and sitting near the window with her daily decaf mocha (“low-fat milk, no foam, no whipped”). “I thought, ‘Who are they to get involved in the movies?’ ”

Ultimately, however, she decided to take her 9-year-old daughter to see the film, “Akeelah and the Bee,” precisely because of the involvement of Starbucks. “I trusted seeing the movie, because it was promoted here,” she said. After all, she liked the company’s coffee; she had already bought and liked several CD’s it produced and sold, compilations of music by Carole King, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Why wouldn’t she like a Starbucks movie? She did, and now she’s considering picking up its latest cultural sales item: “For One More Day,” a book by Mitch Albom.

But Ms. Gottfried’s question is a valid one. Starbucks is clearly very good at selling coffee, but why should it become involved in the movies — and books and CD’s, for that matter? And why would consumers trust its taste in books and films any more than they’d trust, say, Simon & Schuster’s taste in Ethiopia Gemadro Estate decaf?

Yet the chain is increasingly positioning itself as a purveyor of premium-blend culture. “We’re very excited, because despite how much we’ve grown, these are the early stages for development,” said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks. “At our core, we’re a coffee company, but the opportunity we have to extend the brand is beyond coffee; it’s entertainment.” ...

THE more cultural products with which Starbucks affiliates itself, the more clearly a Starbucks aesthetic comes into view: the image the chain is trying to cultivate and the way it thinks it’s reflecting its consumer.

There’s the faintest whiff of discriminating good taste around everything Starbucks sells, a range of products designed, on some level, to flatter the buyer’s self-regard. Starbucks stores don’t carry “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles album everyone’s mother could name; they carry “Revolver,” a critical darling without the same overplayed name recognition.

Might DVD sales be the next frontier? And if so, which DVD’s? Ms. Denson wouldn’t say, but it’s an entertaining exercise for a reporter to try to guess: For the holiday season, perhaps a movie like “White Christmas” — it’s retro-chic, it’s got the classy crooner Bing Crosby going for it, yet it’s not quite as overplayed as, say, “Miracle on 34th Street.” Throw in some never-before-seen outtakes, package it in a beautiful silver and black box. ...

“You’re pretty close there,” Ms. Denson said. “Very, very close.” ...