Traditionally priced a bit higher than the local retailer - if indeed they exist in your neck of the woods -   Starbucks outlets have begun to clear out their stock of CDs, pushing up sales rise for a number of acts who have been on the charts for awhile.
Historically, Starbucks has prepurchased considerable stock of CDs in what is known as a "one-way," i.e, they cannot be returned to the distributors, so it's either sell or destroy.
The few Starbucks I have visited have scaled down to just four or five discs, the most prominently displayed being John Mellencamp's fine - and finely recorded - "Life, Death, Love & Freedom."  The disc sold 56,000 copies in its first week. It was pushed with a full page color ad in the Sunday New York Times, a media buy that we probably will not be seeing Starbucks repeating in connection with music.
While John is celebrating, so, too might others. Jason Mraz's "We Sing We Dance We Steal Things" sold an extra 4,000 copies in the week. "Flavors of Entanglement" by Alana Morissette, who did a Starbucks exclusive release in the days before those sales appeared in the top 200, was up 3,000 copies. Jakob Dylan's "Seeing Things," a combination Columbia-Starbucks release, rose 52 slots on sales of 9,000, also a 3,000-unit spike.
The coffee company's John Coltrane sampler "Opus" was up 600 units - hey! every little bit helps - to 5,000 cold.Carly Simon's "This Kind of Love" returned to the top 200 on sales of 4,000.

After a month of speculation, Starbucks has confirmed that it will released a James Taylor CD/DVD on its Hear Music label. A live disc titled "One Man Band" will be released during the holiday season.
"One Man Band" was recorded during recent solo concerts at the Colonial Theatre in the Berkshires. The DVD of "One Man" was created by Don Mischer and Sydney Pollack, who combine concert footage with interviews, home movies and photographs from Taylor's personal collection.