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MP3 jukeboxes



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"Internet Music at the Pub"

Internet-enabled public jukeboxes have arrived. Or rather, two such machines
have arrived at Kennedy's Irish Pub and Curry House, located conveniently
(for me) right near CNET in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. eCast
has installed two of the jukeboxes, called the Siren Entertainment System,
in the bar. One is a space-age, wall-mounted affair, and the other is a more
modest countertop unit. If you've been following this column, you've
probably noticed that I'm a bit obsessed with the notion of being able to
access all music from anywhere. It will happen. I just witnessed another
piece of the puzzle in eCast's device.

eCast, along with MP3.com's Beam-it, represents the second step toward
accessing music everywhere you go (the first step is the uploading of music
to the Internet). Using the Internet to superimpose your musical taste over
that of the resident jukebox arbiter will be great. You'll be able to choose
from an infinite selection, swipe your credit/debit card, and hear that
obscure remix no one else in the bar wants to hear.

The Real Thing?
I headed down to Kennedy's for a curry and a pint and to sample eCast's
Internet jukebox firsthand. eCast's press releases had me all excited to see
a concrete manifestation of what has previously been nothing but a fleeting
combination of a techie pipe dream and marketing hype: real-time access to
Internet music away from the desktop.

As I approached the sleek, wall-mounted device, its large, color touch
screen beckoned, "Touch me." So I did. What I saw on the screen next was an
electronic approximation of a traditional jukebox. Four albums are displayed
at a time, and you can tile through them as you would with a normal jukebox.
The main advantage of the Siren Entertainment System is that it lets you
browse by artist, album, genre, and song title--but searching in the
selections on that particular jukebox at Kennedy's is a bit pointless,
because it's likely that what you're looking for won't be there. eCast
claims that the machines are currently connected via DSL to a 30,000-song
online music database, and that any of them can be played by streaming or
downloading. CDs of the songs that are available on the eCast system can be
purchased right there at the machine by swiping a debit or credit card.
Unfortunately, neither the larger unit nor the countertop unit was actually
connected to the Web during my visit, so I couldn't charge the three songs
for a dollar to my debit card or search online. I settled for inserting
quarters to hear New Order's "Thieves Like Us" (which, by the way, I hereby
nominate as the theme song for the online music community).

Unstable Yet Promising
I went to Kennedy's hoping to see a real device capable of grabbing tunes
off the Web, but like so many cool technologies I hear about, this one
didn't seem to be quite there yet. Still, eCast promises that its jukeboxes
will be capable of all kinds of neat tricks. Besides accessing songs on the
Web, the devices will let you shop online by swiping your credit card rather
than typing in all your info, or log into Citysearch.com to plan a night
out. More interesting is the idea of customized jukebox content: If a band
is playing at a club where the eCast device is installed, their music can be
downloaded to the locale a week before they show up. Fans will then be able
to listen to the CD on the jukebox and purchase it right there. Touring
bands will no longer have to drag around stacks of CDs with them.

Possibilities Abound
This got me thinking: A band's label could submit a touring schedule to
eCast and have the songs automatically downloaded to the appropriate
jukeboxes for a two-week period around each show. I've also heard rumors
that some of the huge corporate networks that own most radio stations across
the country are thinking about disseminating playlists and music
electronically to their affiliate stations. Although local DJs probably
aren't too thrilled by this concept, it does present an interesting
possibility when combined with the eCast idea. If labels submitted touring
schedules to both eCast jukeboxes and centralized radio networks, a band's
recorded music could follow them around the country automatically--another
way that music will be smarter and faster in the future.