If you had your Christmas party in the local pub and found the jukebox had an unusually high level of choice, you were probably in one of the first boozers to have the world's most advanced music system.
By Christmas Day, around 10 pubs will be using The Music system, from Inspired Broadcast Networks, which holds almost 2m tracks - a number that is increasing by 300 a day as new releases are added. If you find it difficult to select a track from the usual 3,000 held on a regular CD jukebox, then this amount of choice will give you a real headache.
However, this is only one of a raft of products rolling out of the Soho-based labs of Inspired as part of its plan to drag pub entertainment into the 21st century.
Norman Crowley, the chief executive of Inspired, says: "Entertainment in pubs has not kept up. Fruit machines have not changed in 30 years, video games machines offer only single games, TVs are either off or have the football on, and jukeboxes have not really changed in years. Compare this with the home, where there's Sky TV, broadband internet access, interactive video games, iPods and DVDs. We're now bringing this entertainment into the pub," he says.
The problem is that while the early public houses were a close copy of a typical house of the day - hence the name - times have changed. So while the average residence is now home to a wide array of digital entertainment, the pub remains stuck in an entertainment time warp.
Crowley intends to change this and the jukebox represents the first step. It will be rolled out to as many as 2,000 pubs next year as part of a plan to replace the 5,000 CD jukeboxes supplied to pubs by Leisure Link - the leading operator of traditional coin machines, which owns Inspired. The long-term objective is to have the machines in the rest of the 24,000 Leisure Link-supplied boozers.
At the heart of the jukebox is a broadband connection to a batch of servers that hold the tracks. The 5,000 most frequently played songs are also held on the hard drive. As well as paying 50p for your favourite track, you can stump up £1 and jump to the front of the queue. During the early technology trials in three pubs, 20% chose this option.
The system brings in further revenue by acting as an e-commerce kiosk selling CDs to customers who decide they must have the album they have just heard. Payment can be made with cash or credit card and fulfilment is handled by Entertainment UK - a division of Woolworths.
From January, customers will also be able to pay for MP3 downloads of any tracks. Initially, they will receive an email containing a hyperlink to the track, but by the middle of the year, each jukebox will have its own memory stick slot. And if customers have a Wi-Fi-enabled PDA and the pub has invested in a hotspot - from Inspired's wireless business, the Cloud - they will be able to receive the track in less than a minute. Customers can also buy ringtones of songs, which are sent to their mobile.
All the revenue streams help offset the running cost of the system, which is three times the CD version. The system also took four times more money during the trials, says Crowley.
He expects the system to be used initially by publicans as a provider of background music. By selecting the "background" option, the jukebox function is disabled and a pre-selected list of tracks played instead. A number of playlists can be created. He adds: "Although we expect early publicans to just use this option, when they realise the increase in revenue they could get, then they will want to use it as such. It will start a resurgence of jukeboxes in pubs."
Early next year, these publicans will also be able to incorporate video jukebox functionality into the same box as The Music. This will give it the capacity to hold 300 videos on its hard drive and access up to 100,000 more by downloading them over the jukebox's broadband connection. These videos can then be displayed on plasma screens. It is this broadband connection that is at the heart of what Crowley calls the "Pub Hub". This and the plasma screens provides the opportunity to create the pub of the future.
By splitting the screen, a section can be used to display adverts or sponsored drinks promotions. There have been trials in Dublin with Diageo as well as at a number of universities. For example, after a goal has been scored during a football match, the screen could display a timer and inform customers they have five minutes to order pints at £1.50.
Landlords - using a PC and a simple, user-friendly interface - can control all promotions as well as run their own. The screen can also be used as a chalkboard on which customers can pay to have a message displayed. Such messages can be sent by mobile phone using a short-code number. Mobile phones can also be used to request a video to be played.
While this all sounds pretty advanced, Crowley says it does not really represent the pub of the future because the technology is already being installed around the country. The real pub of the future is still in the labs and we will probably have to wait until next Christmas to get a glimpse of what that involves.
