Anyone hear of "Jukebox Hero" jukebox?

[Ken Layton]

There's someone local to the Olympia, Washington area 'manufacturing' internet downloading jukeboxes and selling them straight to business locations thus displacing legitimate licensed jukebox operators. Whoever it is they are putting the name "Jukebox Hero" on the touchscreen monitor and on a nameplate on the front of the jukebox. This person/company is telling locations they can simply boot out the existing licensed jukebox operator and buy one of these (homemade) downloading jukeboxes. Then this person/company says you can download anything you want and put it on the jukebox without paying anyone or any company. Says you don't even need a license!

What's up with that? I think this person is playing with fire and is misleading business locations not to mention screwing over legitimate jukebox operators who pay all their license fees.

[Kevin Mullins]

So they are manufacturing a complete jukebox with software that downloads music from the internet?

Sounds like there's alot of fine lines that are probably being crossed.
Or at least a bit mis-informative as to how the "download" process works. (legally)

[Ken Layton]

Yes, they are 'manufacturing' a complete (looks homemade) wall mount jukebox with all software installed. They even cram it full of 10,000 songs when you buy the machine! Evidently this person/company is making two versions: one with full internet & downloading capabilities and the other with just a hard drive and the location owner can download from their own computer at home and transfer the files to the jukebox via either a removable hard drive or flash drive.

[Pops]

From the sound of it they are not just crossing some fine lines, they are so far over some very thick lines they can't even see the lines anymore.
First off downloading anything but licenced and paidfor music is illegal, if it's for public broadcast, hell, even allowing a radio on in the background is illegal without a licence from the music publishing rights people.
If the "jukebox" is just an internet radio and no music is stored on it, once it's in a public place and used to 'add value' to the premises you need a licence.
This sounds like a harddrive juke that has been filled from torrent files.
BigTime Illegal.

Of course I could be wrong and the DRM people have seen the light and like Radiohead now give everything away for free.

[Barry Barcrest]

Without looking at it and seeing how it works it's hard to say. The internet hooked up one might be using a front end for a paid music store? Like itunes or similar. However it still doesn't sound strictly legit. There are quite a few of these jukes poping up in bars in the UK now. I would say 99% of discos/karaokes run off mp3 files also along with a lot of DJ's. The laws are not as strict in the UK as they are in the US regarding digital music but it seems like more and more places are willing to take the risk.

[chadd]

If the "jukebox" is just an internet radio and no music is stored on it, once it's in a public place and used to 'add value' to the premises you need a licence.

you have to pay ASCAP fees to have any music in a bar at all, whatsoever.

the only exceptions would be original music that you have specific permission to play it from the original performer.

[Barry Barcrest]

There is a thred discussing commercial usage over on my forum here..

http://www.freeboxjukebox.com/Forum/index.php?topic=592.0

You guys probably know more than what we have been talking about. Feel free to let us know any other information. I quite like my idea of a digital frontend powering a CD driven mechanical back end. That would be an ideal way to get around a lot of the licence issues because it is then a CD jukebox which is a lot eaiser to get licenced for and place in a bar from how i understand the laws in the US.

Someone mentioned Harry Fox if it has internet capabilities.

[Ken Layton]

The licenses that a bar/tavern/club, etc pay themselves is for live bands or recorded/reproduced music from sources other than a jukebox. The jukebox is licensed seperately from all other music in the establishment. If a location or a jukebox operator owns a 45rpm vinyl juke or a cd juke then you get a license from the Jukebox License Office (JLO). The juke owner pays a single yearly fee (on a sliding scale depending on the number of jukeboxes to be licensed) which covers the public performance of music on the juke for a year's time (Jan 1 to Dec 31 regardless of when you bought the license). The more jukes you license the lower the fee goes. Commercial CD jukeboxes are only allowed to be licensed with commercially manufactured music cd's. In other words no homemade or burned yourself cd's are allowed in the machine or the machine is considered in violation.

As to internet/downloading/hard drive/MP3 jukes, only the major jukebox manufacturers are licensed to use that technology in a commercial environment. Rowe-AMI, Rock-Ola, Wurlitzer, Touchtunes, and NSM are the only ones. They each paid very big money to officially license certain songs & artists to be played on their networks. Typically 10 cents of each dollar going into the jukebox pays the license as an ongoing copyright license fee which the juke manufacturer collects from the juke operator each month. These jukeboxes are NOT for sale to individuals or locations. Only full-fledged jukebox operators can buy these machines. The major manufacturers all have hammered out deals with ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

Penalties in the USA for jukebox copyright violations is very very high and the licensing groups do indeed play hardball on this regardless of whether you're a giant company or a little fish. They want their money.

[Kevin Mullins]

Just curious if anyone knew off hand......
What if all the money collected in a jukebox was donated to a charity or school organization of sorts? Do these major licensing rules apply the same?

[Barry Barcrest]

The licenses that a bar/tavern/club, etc pay themselves is for live bands or recorded/reproduced music from sources other than a jukebox. The jukebox is licensed seperately from all other music in the establishment. If a location or a jukebox operator owns a 45rpm vinyl juke or a cd juke then you get a license from the Jukebox License Office (JLO). The juke owner pays a single yearly fee (on a sliding scale depending on the number of jukeboxes to be licensed) which covers the public performance of music on the juke for a year's time (Jan 1 to Dec 31 regardless of when you bought the license). The more jukes you license the lower the fee goes. Commercial CD jukeboxes are only allowed to be licensed with commercially manufactured music cd's. In other words no homemade or burned yourself cd's are allowed in the machine or the machine is considered in violation.

I think this is the answer... These licences are the easiest to obtain. Like i said if you hooked up a large amount of CD's (via a changer) to a PC with a nice touchscreen interface it would look and work like a digital jukebox however the songs would be played off original CD's. Admittedly you would be limited to around 100 CD's (You can have more but it's a cost thing) but if you select the 100 CD's correctly for the venue you are siting the box i don't see an issue.

If you are a small time player this seems the easiest way to get a lot of the cool features of digital boxes licenced and in a bar. The real think people want is the ease of searching and top 10 lists that digital offers. They don't care if it's CD's actually providing the tunes or MP3's.

[richms]

The next step would be to have the cd players housed off site for security, then the step after that is to use ones that cache the entire cd to a tempory harddrive, like those old changers that librarys used to get around licensing issues for cdrom based materials. then the next step would be a distributed cache system etc etc.

I wonder how far you could push it and still be able to license it as a cd based one, Im guessing the limit lies somewhere between seperating the changer from the interface and the multiple interfaces per changer, but who knows really till it makes it to trial

[Ken Layton]

If it involves a hard drive and/or the internet for either storage or access then you've got problems. Like i said only the major jukebox manufacturers are licensed to use hard drives for music in commercial environments. All of the major juke manufacturers have patents on this stuff too.

Currently there's a huge patent infringement lawsuit going on between Touchtunes and Rowe-Ami/Merit. Each is suing each other for patent infringement regarding downloading/internet access jukebox technology. This was covered a couple of weeks ago in both replay and Playmeter magazines in their breaking news. Personally I think Rowe-Ami/Merit will win. They are owned by a huge conglomerant with tons of money to pay lawyers. Plus the fact that Rowe has been making jukes for over 70 years and has many many jukebox patents to their name. Touchtunes has only been around ten years and personally I think their jukeboxes are piles of crap.

[Barry Barcrest]

I don't see why you need the CD's off site or a harddrive involved for the music. Just a sony 300 CD changer and a pc would do it. Also that way you can change out music as you see fit, replacing CD's that don't really get played at that venue.

[Ken Layton]

I understand that two large jukebox manufacturers are now filing patent infringement lawsuits against this 'hero' jukebox maker. I've also heard that one of the large music content providers for commercial jukeboxes is in the process of filing suit (copyright infringement) too.

[Barry Barcrest]

I understand that two large jukebox manufacturers are now filing patent infringement lawsuits against this 'hero' jukebox maker. I've also heard that one of the large music content providers for commercial jukeboxes is in the process of filing suit (copyright infringement) too.

Hahaha I would like to see them win or at least cause some change in the law for you guys to prevent BOSE's domination of the US market..  They threatened legal action with my old host because one of my users made a clone of thier skin. That was fair enough and i removed the skin however they didn't like me comparing to thier juke either and persisted with the threats. I now have another host and they have since been quite but it did wind me up a little that they basically tried to bully me. AFAIK it is perfectly legal for me to compare my software to theres.

[JackTucky]

I understand that two large jukebox manufacturers are now filing patent infringement lawsuits against this 'hero' jukebox maker. I've also heard that one of the large music content providers for commercial jukeboxes is in the process of filing suit (copyright infringement) too.

If there are lawsuits then they know who the guy is.  Do you know who he is Ken?

[Ken Layton]

No, I don't know----yet.

[Ken Layton]

From the December 5, 2009 Replay Magazine website:

AMI WORKING WITH RECORD BIZ ON BUSTING ILLEGAL DIGITAL JUKES
(Posted December 4, 2009 -- 3PM)

AMI Entertainment is working closely with both the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) and federal law enforcement authorities across the U.S. to both educate operators about what is and is not legal in the digital jukebox arena and bring to justice those who are knowingly breaking copyright law with homemade jukeboxes.

“We’ve taken the lead on the investigation side,” said AMI’s Bob Fay in an exclusive interview with RePlay. “We have an extensive team that we have put together, including attorneys and many former law enforcement officers, and we are moving forward with several key cases. I’m confident that we are going to see federal action, both criminal and civil, in the near future.”

Fay has been conducting a three-year investigation into illegal digital jukes, which have mainly cropped up in urban markets. He is working closely with both the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice because violations of copyright law fall under federal as opposed to state law. In many of the cases Fay encounters, operators of the private label jukes, essentially customized computers, say they are protected by public performance licensing which is not the case.

“Those licenses are strictly performance licenses and have nothing to do with content,” stressed Fay. “Content rights can only be obtained by the labels. We are breaking new ground in helping enforce what we are now calling cyber fraud.”

Fay cautioned operators to make sure that any new technology they consider utilizing is properly licensed both through the performing rights organizations and the owner of the master recording rights, namely the music labels. “You’ve got to be careful,” noted Fay. “If you’re not properly licensed, you’re taking a chance of getting prosecuted.” Look for much more on this story here at Instant RePlay, as well as in future issues of RePlay Magazine.

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This means they are out there investigating home made or illegally modified commercial jukeboxes placed in commercial businesses. As with all the other Merit/Rowe/AMI Entertainment court cases lately, I'm sure AMI Entertainment will probably win their cases.