Double Cappuccino and a CD, to Go

They are everywhere this holiday season--music CDs bearing the names of retail stores. Whether it’s Eddie Bauer, Chevron or Mrs. Field’s Cookies, it seems branded CDs have replaced Muzak as the soundtrack to our shopping experience--and one that can be purchased along with the goods in the store.

“Victoria’s Secret was one of the first to do it really successfully,” said Billy Straus, president of Rock River Communications, a New York City company specializing in branded music compilations. “In the last five years, it’s gone from its infancy to being somewhat ubiquitous.”

And Straus is partially responsible. His company has made musical compilations for Pottery Barn, Time magazine, Bank One and Restoration Hardware, to name a few.

Starbucks provides its numerous outlets with musical reflections of the coffee store’s image, mixes that include old standards by Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. They began selling the CDs in March 1995, responding to customers’ requests to buy what they were listening to while sipping their half-cafs and grande mochas.

Its new holiday CD, “A Merry Affair,” features Frank Sinatra singing “Jingle Bells” and Bing Crosby’s “Winter Wonderland.” Like many of these namesake CDs, the mix is lounge-oriented.

“It’s music that sounds right in a coffeehouse,” said Holly Hinton, a music specialist for the Seattle-based business.

Starbucks now partners with a number of top-shelf record labels, including EMI, BMG and Rhino Records, to offer a more wide-ranging selection, from Cuban and Afro-pop to Italian opera and Chicago blues. The company has produced 36 so far and now issues a new one every six weeks. While only the most recent titles are in stores, customers can order older CDs from the Starbucks Web site (https://www.starbucks.com).

Hinton won’t say how well the CDs sell, just that “they’ve been a great part of our business.”

The comments are echoed by a manager at Banana Republic on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, who said the store’s $12.50 holiday CD has been selling “very well.” (The retailer has been producing CDs on a quarterly basis for the last three years.) In a merging of entertainment and sales, the cover of this holidays’ “All Wrapped Up” CD features a wool glove with a bow tied around one finger. The gloves also are available for purchase in the store.

Similarly, Pottery Barn regularly features a single, iconic product on its CD covers. “RSVP,” a compilation featuring Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis Jr. and Count Basie, shows a wine glass. “Hip Holidays Volume II,” with songs by Dean Martin and Lena Horne, displays a Christmas ornament. Both the wine glass and the ornament are sold at the store, Straus says.

Eddie Bauer’s holiday CD, the cover of which features a plane flying over a mountain, is really a CD-ROM. In addition to songs by Aretha Franklin and Tony Bennett, it includes film shorts and a catalog that connects to the Web for instant online shopping.

*

Other stores are experimenting with different techniques. Recognizing that most people will not spend enough time in the store to hear a complete CD, Brooks Bros. is introducing a CD listening station to its 5th Avenue location in New York City, having taken a cue from Emporio Armani’s Paris boutique, which also has one.

Brooks Bros.’ CDs are predominantly jazz.

“It’s very American, like us,” said Derek Ungless, the company’s executive vice president and creative director.

For most companies offering branded CDs, the music is intended to reflect the lifestyle associated with the brand. But with so many stores jumping in, and using the same recording artists, the brand distinctions fall away--there is little differentiation, for example, between a compilation from Banana Republic and one from Restoration Hardware.

“Those artists are classic and classy, and I think that feeling is something that a lot of these brands feel comfortable being connected to. It matches their image from a lifestyle point of view,” said Rock River’s Straus.

Besides, such music is generally pleasant and controversy-free.

“Miles Davis and Duke Ellington don’t have some of the baggage that more modern music tends to have,” Straus added. “Modern rock, for instance, can have angst-ridden undertones. There can be a political agenda. . . . For brands that are trying to create ambience and lifestyle imaging, it doesn’t connect.”