Eight days ago, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) began selling the new CD from former Beatle Paul McCartney titled Memory Almost Full. Currently, the CD is only available from Starbucks stores in all 27 countries and on Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). The CD may be the spark that Starbucks needs to get its stock going, as it is selling extraordinarily well and may lift Starbucks' June same-store sales.

Starbucks is a long-term, excellent growth story. The company currently operates almost 12,000 stores, with a stated corporate goal of growing to over 40,000 units in the next decade. This year so far has been a frustrating one for Starbucks as its stock has traded as high as $36, but is sitting at its low point right now at $27.74.

Update June 13, 2007, 4:36 p.m.: "First-week sales of 160,541 copies marked a 33% improvement over those for Flaming Pie."

The first quarter earnings for Starbucks came in right at consensus expectations: no upside surprise. The market reacted with a rather large yawn and the stock has been trading sideways since. The Paul McCartney CD may be the catalyst necessary to get the stock and the same store sales popping in sync.

After deep-sixing their CD burning experiment and pushing their own line of CD's at the register, Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX) is preparing to dip further into the music scene by offering MP3 downloads. Last week Starbucks' head Howard Schultz said that the company would probably roll out the new program within the next year and a half.

The market has responded with confusion and skepticism. The primary question for most is Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) involvement. Already the market driver, some wonder what would tempt Apple to share the take with Starbucks. Schultz may have tipped his hand in this respect by referring to MP3s, a universal music format that iTunes does not provide.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), on the other hand, might have great interest in such a partnership to push their new Zune player, their attempt to horn in on the Apple personal music and portable video empire. After they failed to break the iPod's lock on sales during the past Christmas season, MS might be looking for some strong cross-marketing opportunities.