Submitted by: Gamefreak_cd_copy
Source: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2
The Net will soon be crashing through the velvet ropes at a nightspot near you: Ecast, a San Francisco start-up, has developed Internet-connected jukeboxes that the company plans to sell to bars and clubs. |
Ecast's Siren Entertainment System - which also includes countertop game machines - is actually composed of PCs running Windows 2000. The floor jukebox, which has a 17-inch monitor, is four feet tall and weighs about 375 pounds; Ecast also has a smaller, wall-mountable version of the jukebox. Each jukebox has a 40-gigabyte disk drive that can store about 300 albums encoded in MP3 format.
The totally cool thing about the Ecast jukebox: If you can't find a song you want, you can download one from a catalog of 40,000 albums over the Net. Besides playing music, the machines will also let you browse the Web and play poker, blackjack and various other games.
"We're bringing the Net to places where it's never been before," said Roger McAulay, Ecast's president.
McAulay said the jukebox spot provides an established business model with great cash flow: Vending machine operators foot the up-front bill for the devices, and Ecast gets a cut of each song that's played. Individual operators decide how much to charge for each song and other services. He said that early tests show the devices earn up to twice as much as a traditional CD jukebox - partly because they're new and cool-looking, but also because they provide a much better selection of music.
Ecast has received $15 million in financing from investors, including Doll Capital Management, El Dorado Ventures and Viant, the Web consulting company that developed Ecast's system. The company has had about 20 test units in the field for a few months, and in June expects to begin distributing 500 pairs of jukeboxes and game machines. Basically, all a bar owner needs to do is plug the devices in and Ecast is able to monitor and manage them remotely.
Internet access is provided to Ecast by Global Crossing over either a 56-kilobit-per-second modem or a Digital Subscriber Line connection.
The Ecast devices, which accept either cash or credit cards, also make money from sponsorships that rotate advertising when the machines are idle. In addition, Ecast has deals with e-commerce partners, including Amazon.com, to promote CDs. McAulay said Ecast has sold about a dozen CDs during the test run - and he adds with a laugh that they've all occurred between midnight and 2 a.m.
