The Smart Jukebox of the Future

The classic jukebox as we tend to picture it—art deco-style blaring that rock music to white-shirted teens in a 50s diner—is a beacon of nostalgia right up there with Polaroid film and cassette tapes. But the jukebox isn't dead at all; it's just gone digital. In fact there are some 80,000 digital jukeboxes playing in bars and restaurants around the US.

Maybe you've seen them around—not the decorative vintage Wurlitzers and Rock-Olas, but "smart" internet-connected jukeboxes that look like an oversized iPad plastered on the wall and let you navigate through millions of songs on the touchscreen or from an app on your phone.

Digital jukeboxes first came about back in the late 90s and are growing increasingly popular. The most common model is made by TouchTunes which has the market pretty well cornered. There are over 60,000 of them in the US, loaded up with over 3 million songs available at a click. The other popular brand is AMI, with another 20,000 locations around the country, and over a million licensed tracks.

Which of course is the big difference between the jukebox of the future and the classic Wurlitzers that offered a few dozen old 78s or 45s. The digital jukebox is quite literally a celestial jukebox—a term used to describe the once-futuristic vision of free access to any music at the push of a button. And just like the pivot from vinyl or CD collections to streaming services like Spotify, there are pros and cons to having nearly unlimited instant access to the world's music.

For one, the loss of curation. Venues have some control over the music collection they stock; they can filter out certain artists or genres and control the background music if patrons aren't choosing songs. But one common complaint of these next-gen jukes is that bars will lose their unique musical identity and we'll instead be stuck with the dystopian image of hopping from venue to venue where the masses have selected the same top 40 singles at each stop.

You also sacrifice some serendipity for options. I personally am one of the most indecisive humans on Earth, which led to standing in front of the glowing LED screen in a local dive bar paralyzed by choice while a line formed behind me. What was I in the mood for? What was the vibe in the bar? (I went with Sonic Youth, for no particular reason at all.)

Like most music services, you can search the interface or browse by featured artists, genre, etc. And to avoid pissing off the other patrons, you can do this deliberating back at your table if you download and sign up for the app. On both TouchTunes and AMI a song costs 1 to 2 credits, at 50 cents a credit. Or, because we've been spoiled by instant gratification and money talks in this capitalist society, there's a controversial feature that lets you pay extra to have your selection jump to the front of the queue.

TouchTunes pitches its machines as a social experience, so the app lets you see the profiles of the other users in the bar and what songs they've selected. (Next stop: dating app?) you can also see the next several songs that are queued up, the ones previously played, and what's currently playing, like a built-in Shazam.

AMI meanwhile is emphasizing playing music videos along with the songs. Their jukeboxes come with an attachable TV screen. AJ Russo, AMI's Chief Creative Officer, told me that music videos are a huge opportunity for the jukebox of the future, especially as production quality of music videos gets better and better, yet you have to go to Vimeo or YouTube to watch them, which "obviously don't really make sense in a social setting like a bar." It's a smart idea, but the company also markets that screen space to the venue to run ads and promotional content, which is easy to imagine getting obnoxious fast.

For better or worse, the smart jukebox is the latest evolution of a machine that's had a huge influence on American culture over the last century. Its origins go back to Thomas Edison, who accidentally invented a way to record sound back in the 1870s, which eventually led to coin-operated phonographs appearing in saloons that you could pay a nickel to listen to through headphones (there wasn't yet a way to amplify the sound so it didn't yet replace live music as a form of public entertainment).

Jukeboxes were a sensation until radio came along and temporarily stole the spotlight. But interestingly, as Rick Botts writes in the June 1995 edition of Popular Mechanics, they remained crucial throughout the 20s and 30s as a way to play music that was hard to find or that mainstream radio stations shirked away from—namely, blues and country in the segregated states (and later, rock n' roll when it was still considered subversive).

"One of the strongest markets at this time was among African Americans, who supported coin-operated phonographs by playing them in Southern roadside bars or cafes called juke joints," wrote Botts. "In essence, the term juke came out of the same body of slang that gave birth to the name jazz. The slang term originally referred to dancing, having a good time, and probably, sex."

By the middle of the 30s there were 210,000 jukeboxes in the US, according to New York University's Dead Media Archive. That went up to 500,000 by mid-50s, at which point the availability of the transistor radio and TV started the slow decline of the jukebox through the 60s and 70s. The CD jukebox came along and turned things around for a moment, but we all know what happened there.

"That's our history. We've basically been making jukeboxes since the early 1920s," said Russo. "Aesthetically, what the jukeboxes look like now versus the 40s and 50s… that was the golden age of jukeboxes. Those jukeboxes were beautiful," he continued. "But, the cost of replicating that, you know, holy smokes."

TouchTunes jukeboxes sell for around $5,000 to $7,000, but they rake in a lot of revenue because it's so easy for patrons to pump money into them. "Jukeboxes have traditionally been one of the most profitable form of revenue you can put in a venue," said Russo.

That's one feature that hasn't changed at all—people will pay to play. And those 50-cent songs add up. As Russo put it, "It's very rare to hear the music stop."