As one of the leaders in the jukebox industry, Sound Leisure has always been at the forefront of technology. From vinyl to CD to digital, the UK-based manufacturer has been there every step of the way and for Chris Black, the innovative thinking and enthusiasm passed down from his father, who founded the company 32 years ago, plays an important role in the company's continued success.
"The way we use the technology in the jukeboxes allows operators to operate more economically," said Black. "They don’t have to go down to the site each week and update the music if they don’t want to - they can simply send the updates down a telephone line. Because updates are so readily available the jukebox will take more money as the chart hits are all there - especially with television programmes like X Factor, the winner’s song can be on the jukebox the next day and the machine can advertise this fact."
For Black, while technology has improved the jukebox no end and provided great feature opportunities, it does, however, mean there is a different skill set required to operate them. It is essential manufacturers achieve a stable platform when using this technology at such a high level. Fortunately for Sound Leisure, the manufacturer is already there and receives very few calls relating to operational problems.
"The launch of digital jukeboxes opened the doors to a lot of features and there is so much you can do with a jukebox now - advertising being just one. The one feature I feel really put us on the map and launched the Sound Leisure brand on the digital side of things was the Top of the Pops feature on the Milestones in Music software. It really got people thinking about what you can do with the technology - the amount of work that went into that was immense and it took a lot of people a good number of years just to complete the software and the encoding of the music."
As the oldest single ownership business in the sector, Sound Leisure has unmatched experience and a wealth of product knowledge, meaning it can offer quality product to suit every budget and market. While some of its top end products might cost more, the manufacturer continues to support products well past any of its competitors and finds people still ring on a daily basis wanting to buy the older machines for their lower end sites.
"Innovation is what the business is built on," said Black. "Whether you’re building the machine, doing the programming or doing the R&D for our next product - virtually every department in the company has an R&D leader trying to improve the product and take cost out to a degree that we remain competitive but not ruin the product."
Black went on to tell InterGame how the jukebox industry, and Sound Leisure in particular, would not have been able to move forward without the input of operators around the world, telling them what works, what doesn’t, what features they want included and so on.
"There’s a lot of innovative thinking out there," said Black, "and there is a lot of responsibility on the operators’ shoulders - we can try and push the product to a certain degree but they’ve got to be on board and provide us with feedback. When we initially introduced the digital machines everyone was quite cautious because of the cost, which was understandable but over the 12 to 18 months the machines were on test the operators really saw the benefits and embraced the new technology.
"Operators tend to come up with a lot of ideas, we’ve got a lot of products out there in a wide range of locations - not only pubs but cruise liners, hospitals and even in shops. Due to this we often get people wanting them to do different jobs and some of the features people request we have to say no to or require an additional charge, but the feedback is essential and really helps our R&D."
Surprisingly the internet is one technological advancement that is yet to have a significant impact on the jukebox sector. For Black, in theory all jukebox manufacturers would like their machines connected to the internet, however there are market forces that sometimes don’t allow that.
"Because of the state of the industry, particularly in the UK, many sites are closing and opening frequently and it is hard to tell what is going on from a day-to-day basis; if you were to have every machine connected and a 12-month broadband contract and then the site closes after six months, the operator is still liable for the cost of the broadband.
"We all know we need to get to that stage and there’s various movement within the industry now with the retailers and operators trying to work out deals so no one’s left ‘holding the baby’. The more machines we get online will benefit everyone, but it does have its administration issues and as such isn’t the perfect solution for all operators."
Thanks to the digital wave there is virtually anything you can do with a jukebox now as it is a PC-based product - anything you can do with a PC you can do with a jukebox, but for Black the question is, how far do you want to go with it?
"There is lots of talk about adding games and so on," he said. "What we’re trying to do is go back to basics , I think you can go too far and really dilute the offering. What we know for a fact with the Milestones brand is that it will beat anything else out there cash in box and that it does it as a jukebox - it’s not playing games it is a jukebox that appeals to the customer. What we’re doing is looking at the jukebox to see how e can improve it, make it take more cash and give people the choice they demand. Operators have realised that jukeboxes will stand up on their own two feet, can take money and they can run a good business from it."
