First the relationship. Then the breakup. Now the lawsuit.
Singer Carly Simon has sued Starbucks Corporation for between $5 million and $10 million.
She alleges that the coffee giant didn’t do enough to promote the album she released last year on its record label, Hear Music.
Carly Simon
To help make her case, she has hired attorney David Boies, the man who took on Microsoft for the Justice Department and later made the case for Al Gore in the battle over recounting Florida ballots in the 2000 presidential election.
Starbucks has denied the singer’s allegations, saying it did for her what it did for its other artists. Those entertainers have included Paul McCartney and Simon’s former husband, James Taylor.
Simon signed with Hear Music, a joint venture between Starbucks and Concord Music Group, in October 2007.
Hear Music agreed to release and market “This Kind of Love,” a Brazilian-inflected album of 13 songs.
Simon wrote most of the songs on the album, though Sally and Ben Taylor, her children from her marriage to Taylor, each contributed a song, as well.
Simon told The New York Times that Hear Music originally talked of an advance of $750,000 to $1 million for the album. That figure dropped to $575,000 by the time she signed the contract, Simon said.
At first, the venture seemed to go well, in part because Simon liked Howard D. Schultz, the man who built Starbucks into a worldwide venture.
Schultz was chairman of Starbucks when Hear Music recruited Simon. In January 2008, when the company was facing increased competition, he returned to his earlier position as CEO.
“Starbucks was so attractive to me because of what it offered, and Howard Schultz seemed to be such an attractive person,” Simon told the Times.
Then, on April 24, 2008, five days before the release of Simon’s album, Starbucks pulled back from the music business, turning the management of Hear Music and Simon’s album over to Concord Music Group.
Simon was not pleased.
“I was angry at first,” she told the Los Angeles Times in June 2008. “I went through all the stages: anger, denial, acceptance.”
Acceptance did not endure.
The album peaked at 23,000 copies sold in its first week. As of now, it has sold 124,000 copies.
Starbucks contends that sales fell off because of “tepid response from consumers” not only at Starbucks but also at other retailers that sold the album.
Simon alleges that Starbucks sales were weakened by a lack of promotion and the fact that the album was not distributed to all Starbucks stores.
By the summer of 2008, Simon was writing Schultz notes of complaint. And by January of this year, she had gotten in touch with Boies.
Simon, 64, told The New York Times that the loss of expected income from the album sales has forced her to push back her planned retirement.
Managed now by Alan Mintz, who was at Hear Music when she signed with that company, Simon is to release an album this month on her son’s label, Iris Records.
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