Whilst driving from London to York far too late last night to concentrate I heard an interesting piece of news on the radio - wasn't my car, so my empeg wasn't with me ;-(
It was related to an mp3 based jukebox for pubs that would store all the music on an internal and have new tunes pumped into it via the internet. You could search the internal drives plus the servers at the manufacturers and tunes not stored locally would then be downloaded.

I missed the bit about who was making it, but is due for launch 'any time soon' - any one know any more about this?

Phil

I just got back from the ATEI show at Earls Court, London - the second largest
coin-op/vending/parks/rides/etc show in the world after IAPPA. Most of the major jukebox manufacturers and distributors had a presence there, but I saw very little evidence of MP3.

The most noteworthy product was "Silver Ball" from (I think) a German manufacturer. It was a general purpose pub/bar console with games, information access and MP3 jukebox features. Unfortunately the user interface was absolutely awlful. There was something in their brochure about internet download so maybe that's the product that radio station picked up on.

My experience is that the jukebox industry is terrified of copyright issues with MP3. In the UK most pubs are tied to breweries and all the major breweries have their own manufacturing and distribution companies for slot machines and jukeboxes. Some of these are even tied to record labels. As you may imagine, those layers of red tape slow down technological progress rather a lot!

Nonetheless, MP3 (and other format) digital music is ideal for the jukebox market so I think it's only a matter of time before it becomes accepted.

Rob

My local pub (bar) has a digital jukebox, although I'm not sure of the manufacturer. I'm also not sure that it uses MP3, because it only advertises 750 songs.
Not much help, I know, but I'll get more info. After a few Malibu+Cokes, I don't pay much attention to the jukebox :) .
Jason

_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."