I’ve been noticing the rapid replacement of traditional jukeboxes with the new wall mounted jukeboxes that download music off the internet. The concept sounds great but I was taken aback by the way they charged for songs. They have a 2 tiered pricing system. The first level is 2 for $1 which is an incredible rip-off considering there is no mechanical maintenance nor does it have to be updated with CD’s. That price is for those songs loaded in memory. The second tier so 1 for $1 and represents songs pulled off the net. WTH? You want me to pay the same amount for the one time rental of a song as I would for personal licensing of it? This is for something that is pulled off the internet just as all the other songs are?
For the 2nd tier songs the machine points out that it costs “2 credits” and asks you if you wish to play it after already selecting it. I can see where people would simply press yes and continue on without noticing the cost when putting $5 in.
Is this now the standard transaction with jukeboxes now? I feel like I’m being ripped off and am inclined to play less music. The selection of the 50-cent songs appears (IMO) to be universally poor in each bar I’m at. I would go so far as to say deliberately poor in order to encourage $1 songs. If anything the operators of the machines should charge less per song because it’s less expensive to maintain and there should be no difference in price between what’s loaded in memory and what is loaded directly from the internet.
I go to bars reasonably frequently and it seems all jukeboxes are like this now. It seems like mainly the songs they list in that main menu are cheaper and if you search for something not on that list it is more likely to cost a dollar per song. It is a ripoff. I know of one of these jukeboxes though that often gives you the chance to win a free song by hitting on all these little mole-type things that pop on the screen, but the touch screen is not that responsive and even 2 people have a hard time achieving the goal to get the free song.
The worst part is, a lot of the bars I frequent seem to have people in them that love to play horrible, horrible music and it gets to the point where my group feels forced to spend money in the jukebox to improve our night. Yeah we could go to another bar but this happens at a LOT of bars and around here at least most bars’ music comes from the jukebox.
The owners can load select CDs on the machine, and those are 1 credit per song. The download side is 2 credits per song. The owners have some say in the cost. Around here, it ranges from 14 to 20 credits for $5.00. A couple places I frequent have loaded up their boxes with some interesting selections, the others leave them with the default music, which means you find the same crap from bar to bar.
They’re a mixed blessing. On one hand, you can find some really cool stuff on the download side. On the other hand, what someone else finds really cool might be the most annoying song in the universe. You can find stuff like 30 minute Phish drum solos.
Aside from the bad music, there are two problems I have with these machines (if you can’t tell, I play them a lot!). One is people trying to get the most for their money. Instead of playing what they want, they start picking songs by length. This can lead to some funky selections (ever heard the 20 minute version of Green Grass and High Tides?). The other problem is the music on the old jukeboxes had to be picked by the bar owners, which reflected the personality of the place. You could tell a lot about a bar by looking at the jukebox selection.
I wonder how much money they would make if you could put in a dollar to shut off someone elses song!
Internet-downloadable jukeboxes threaten to destroy the very concept of the jukebox.
Years ago, one of the great joys of finding a new bar was checking out the box. Each one had its own mood and personality, and when you found one with a well-chosen variety of selections that both satisfied and challenged your own personal tastes, it was a true gift.
That said, the 2-tier pricing system can be defended as a way to allow an establishment to retain some control over the music that’s available. Granted, most places put very little thought into it, I’m sure, but I like to believe there are still some proprietors out there who care about this.
When every jukebox in the world can play any song in the world, what’s the point?
You should keep in mind that JB company still has to pay royalties to said artists being played. This is why you wont find every artist you would like to on there.
What pisses me off is I’ll search for a song and download it. Then after the fact I realize that the song was already on the hard drive meaning I could have got the song at the reduced price.
Also, their search system sucks. Install a damn spell checker in those things. If you search for something and your off by even on letter; the JB has no idea what you are searching for.
If people are willing to play the jukebox at that price, then that is the fair market price for a jukebox play.
The cheaper the price to play the jukebox, the more likely it will be that someone will monopolize it, and the songs you put in won’t come up until sometime next week.
What would make a certain sense to me would be an “auction” pricing model, where you choose how much money to pay to play a song, and then the songs are played, not in the order people selected them, but in the order of the prices people paid for them. So if you want to hear your song next, even if there are several other songs already in the queue ahead of you, you can—just put in more money for your song than they put in for theirs.
Hate to break it to you, but you already can pay more to hear your song next. Usually it’s one more credit which is often 50 cents. The ‘play my song next’ option comes up whenever you select songs. So if the person who selected songs before you did not pay extra to hear their songs next you can jump in and play yours if you so choose.
You are absolutely right and until now I never consciously realized I’ve been doing exactly the same thing all this time. I almost always look through a bar’s jukebox to see what they offered. My old (and now gone) blues bar had a phenomenal CD selection and it wasn’t just the blues. The owner loved music and made a point of keeping it well stocked.
When I first saw these new machines I thought that they might open up each bar to the world of music. Instead, they seem to have just the opposite affect.