Welcome to the world, Jukebox.
Jukebox is a digital platform that allows customers to choose the music of a bar, a nightclub or a party, directly from their phones.
You’re at a bar with some friends and ask for a beer and snacks. You’re at ease. The only thing missing for it to be a perfect night would be the DJ playing that song you like so much, the one that blows your mind.
A bit far-fetched, right?
Well, maybe not. You take out your phone, open Jukebox and pick the song you love. There, it’s already playing, for you and for everybody else. How cool is that?
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The host creates a custom URL and shares it with all the guests. Users access the platform from their phones and that’s it — they can start adding and/or voting the songs they want to hear. The most voted songs are played first.
The best thing about it is that you can also use Jukebox when you’re at home with your friends. Anyone who has a Premium Spotify account can download the Jukebox app for Android for free, plug the mobile phone to an audio system and set the music for a private party.
WHY CREATE JUKEBOX?
In the past 30 years, music has changed a lot. Rhythms and sounds have changed, and format has too: from LPs, cassettes, CDs, MP3 players, to streaming. Nowadays, thanks to Spotify and YouTube, it takes only a second to pick any song we want to listen to, from any artist, time period or genre.
However, our ability to interact with music in public areas is very limited. At restaurants, nightclubs and parties there is a person who is in charge of deciding what is going to be played next, and there isn’t much we can do about it.
According to an Immedia Plc survey, 50% of people choose the bars they usually go to taking into account the music that is played there, while 40% claim they wouldn’t go back to a bar where they didn’t like the music that was being played.
So, why not change the music experience at bars, parties, nightclubs and offices? We should be able to pick the music we dig, wherever we are. We only have to bear in mind that a hundred people might have a hundred different musical tastes.
In fact, that’s what happened to us at Aerolab. One day, at the beginning of 2014, we had a bit of an argument about who would be the one in charge of picking the music for the day, and nobody was willing to give up their possibility of being the “DJ”.
On that day, we coined the concept of “music democracy.” We decided to innovate and rely on each other in order to musicalize our workplace. Soon we realized that what had started as a small work argument was in fact a conflict that happened in most public areas. And that’s how the idea of Jukebox was born.
IMPROVING JUKEBOX EXPERIENCE
One of the main features we included from scratch in the platform is the possibility to vote. Jukebox not only generates a list with the songs that each user adds, but also organizes the most popular songs in real time, according to the number of votes that each song gets. In this way, only the most voted songs will be played.
During a paper presented at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition it was argued that the success of stores “depends on the effort that their owners make in order to provide pleasant areas for the public”. In this sense, it was claimed that “the quickest and cheapest way of doing this is implementing an in-store music strategy”.
The survey also posits that nowadays “people are beginning to replace city sounds with music”. Therefore, it’s time to think about a new, innovative music experience to attract and keep customers, stimulate sales, stand out and attain a successful word of mouth.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
From the very beginning, our aim has been to create a simple and functional product. We realized that from a technical point of view it wasn’t an easy challenge, so we had to squeeze more juice out of our developers to sort out all the hindrances we were bumping into.
Today we have an Android app with which anybody can create a Jukebox, no matter where they are. We have already introduced it to many bars in the neighborhood of Palermo, and we have contacted gyms, cultural arts centers and restaurants so that they can join this new experience.
Do you want to try Jukebox?👇
