back to article Celeb-backed music TV phallus Electric Jukebox finally ready for launch

Over a year after it was first announced, the UK music startup described as "the most ridiculous digital music launch in history" will finally be available to punters tomorrow. Electric Jukebox bundles music with a £169 remote control and a dongle, so you can play tunes on your TV. After that, it's £52 a year, and the company …

  1. tiggity Silver badge

    white elephant

    When Mr Fry hosted QI they had a running theme of the elephant in the room, title denotes the elephant this product is.

  2. magickmark
    WTF?

    WHY??

    Huh!!

    Amazon Fire TV stick = £32.99

    Amazon Prime account = £79 (inc free next day delivery, Prime video content, Prime music content)

    Electric Jukebox = £169 inc first year of account

    Electric Jukebox = £52 there after a year (music only (assuming its still available in 12 months))

    Anyone see a flaw in the business model or is it just me??

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      Re: WHY??

      I'd hope it has a better selection of music than Amazon Prime (lots of Best ofs). Amazon have launched an additional service that gives you more music though.

      That said, why you wouldn't just buy a phone and a bluetooth speaker is beyond me. Much better than a proprietary service that won't be around in a couple of years.

      1. g e

        Re: WHY??

        Does anyone make a tv that turns the panel off to become a speaker? None of mine do that that I know of...

        Better off with a bluetooth soundbar and a phone/tablet to stream to it

  3. John Lilburne

    Well I'm one of those that won't have a smart phone

    However, I'm not going to pay £52 a year for a streaming service when I have all the music I want on CDs and on the LAN. Simply none of these services contain much of the music I listen to, and I have a vast collection of stuff from years of buying CDs and Albums. Will it contain any ECM albums? If Eicher still holds out 6+ years already then no it won't.

  4. Planty Bronze badge
    FAIL

    I see what you did there.

    Google Play Music = £119.88 + Chromecast = £30 + Any £50 upwards Android Device = £200

    (£30 more in year 1)

    Year 2 Electric Jukebox makes that saving back.

    1. short

      Re: I see what you did there.

      Year 2? Bwahahah.

      I hope this can be rooted / reflashed into something useful when the service dies.

      Landfill Android and a pair of PC speakers does nicely in the kitchen for me. iplayer, spotify and KEXP - and no Stephen Bloody Fry.

      How long before they produce a phone app & PC client to access the service to try to gain some users who don't want to spend this much on single-use hardware and be tethered to a TV, and how much longer before they shutter it? £7M isn't much in this game of last-man-standing.

      Then again, I'm pretty poor at guessing what people will buy. But surely this ain't it...

  5. J. R. Hartley

    What a load of bollocks.

    As per title.

    1. Baldy50

      Re: What a load of bollocks.

      http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/11/for-five-months-spotify-has-badly-abused-users-storage-drives/

      This too!

  6. Baldy50

    Absolute Radio!

    Very good station, a few ads but it's free.

    The eighties for me usually.

    1. P. Lee
      Windows

      ... Radio

      Indeed.

      A one-off fee of GBP 9.99 gets you a device which allows you to access multiple streaming services forever.

      Or you could visit the charity shops, pick up CD's for next to nothing and give the remainder to charity. Doubleplusgood.

      All this, "I must have what I want right now - I'll pay stupid money for it" is not character building. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" needs to be shown more often.

    2. TheProf
      Mushroom

      All the hit, all the time, all the hit, all the time, all the hit, all the time

      Do they still play adverts on heavy rotation? Last time I heard Absolute the same adverts were being played every 15 minutes or so. After an hour I turned the radio off and wondered how long I'd get for burning down the heavily plugged solicitors office.

      I've not listened to them again. Or burned down any other solicitors offices.

  7. Youngone Silver badge

    Yes, it's expensive

    Of course it costs a lot of money compared to it's competition but things like An Advisory Board of (mostly retired) bigwigs from finance and the music industry will cost a huge amount.

    I'm not sure what value it will add however.

    For me, my Serviio server cost me (something like) 30 of my local dollars and Petr Nejedly never bugs me for any more money.

    When he does however, I will gladly pay up because it is such good value.

    Something the Advisory Board might like to discuss at their next meeting.

  8. lukewarmdog
    FAIL

    Surely the saving doesn't kick in until you've paid for the tv you need to plug the thing into in the first place?

    Stupid idea cos my tv already has radio and music channels and I also have Amazon Prime with more music as a side effect of getting free shipping on the records I buy.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why would you need an iPad with the Apple tv comparison? Just Apple tv and the subscription would be enough.

    Once thing all of those options ignores..... You Tube.

    A Firestick or just any smart TV and unlimited free music streamed via You Tube. Every song also comes with the accompanying video.

    Surely the investors can see this is far too late to market

  10. 0x407ab506

    For streming music I choose Radio Six. I think I will start buying cds again for the album experience.

    No startup can be trusted to last the same way more than a couple of weeks.

    PlaysForSure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure

    1. nijam Silver badge

      > I choose Radio Six

      Unfortunately, every time I tune in to Radio Six ("Six Music" as they call it), there is not much music, but (usually) two people yakking to one another in the BBC's beloved "regional accents". Admittedly they may be yakking about music, I don't stay to find out.

      1. D@v3

        6Music

        I also got increasingly annoyed at how much air time on 6 'Music' was taken up by people plugging their new; book, film, tv show, or just about anything else that wasn't music.

        Switched to Planet Rock, some adverts, but less talking, certainly less 'plugging', and mostly pretty decent music (if you like that sort of thing, which (i'm gonna make a pretty broad assumption) i'd guess most people here would)

  11. sopcannon

    Can the music quality compare to vinyl and cd's ? Streaming music at the most now is 320kbps, I have songs that are in the 20mb range and lossless.

    1. sopcannon

      The default codec streamed to the ROXI is 320kbps AAC. A small (and diminishing) percentage of the catalogue does not have 320kbps and for this we fall back to 160kbps AAC.

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