News

Songbird, MEI to offer more music for the money

December 3, 2002

WEST CHESTER, Pa. - Songbird On-Demand Music LLC co-founder Karl Bingle plans to change the music industry with his innovative jukebox design. 

The jukebox will feature MEI's AE2600 cash acceptor for its music kiosks.

The kiosks, manufactured by Songbird On-Demand Music LLC of Spokane, Washington, will be deployed nationally through distributors, according to a recent MEI news release.

MEI's AE2600 uses optical sensing technology for bill recognition with a 95 percent bill acceptance rate. It will accept bills ranging from $1 to $20 regardless of how they are inserted or if they are wrinkled.

Each unit features a 19-inch color touchscreen with songs separated into categories by style, song title, artist or popularity. It runs on the Linux operating system. All of the software was written by Bingle.

Bingle said in the release that he expects the system to revolutionize the music industry the way CNN revolutionized the news industry.

The music kiosk includes entire CDs in its playlists rather than just one or two songs per artist like traditional jukeboxes.

Songbird differs from other jukeboxes in that it is more compact, offers users access to more songs and features 24-bit digital to analog converters (DACs) with a 100db signal-to-noise ratio, which means virtually no signal distortion.

Songs are stored on a server and streamed to the units in real time. As the server's music library grows so does the selection on each machine in the network.

Users can earn an extra song credit by correctly answering a music trivia question that pops up when money is inserted.

Songbird On-Demand Music develops integrated software and hardware systems to serve the utility industry.

MEI is a manufacturer of electronic bill acceptors, coin mechanisms and other electronic payment systems.