Imagine plunking some money into a jukebox and not being limited in your music choices to the relatively small number of compact discs or, God forbid, antique 45s stored in the machine.


Instead, using a touch-screen monitor and software designed to speed the process, you pick from thousands of songs stored on a computer server miles away. The server, relying on streaming technology, then transmits the music to your location and begins playing it within 4 to 6 secondsfaster than conventional jukeboxes pick up the strains from a record or CDthrough an external amplified sound system.


Karl Bingle, a 39-year-old Spokane computer programmer and musician, and Dan Mackey, a North Side tavern owner and investor, have developed such a system. They expect to begin pitching the high-tech jukeboxes to bars, restaurants, and other such establishments shortly through an enterprise here called Songbird On-Demand Music Co.


What we want to do is use Spokane as a test market to demonstrate that it works, then explore ways to expand it nationally and internationally, Bingle says. Our ultimate goal is we would love somebody who is a big player (in the music industry) to pick it up and run with it, he says.


A prototype Songbird jukeboxactually its more like a kioskhas been in use for nearly six months at Snoops Saloon, at 805 E. Rosewood, which Mackey owns, and has generated strong positive feedback from patrons, the two men say. They say theyve got six more units that are mostly assembled and that they hope to begin installing at agreeable Spokane-area establishments on a trial basis beginning this month. A couple of computer servers that will supply the music are located for now in Bingles home, and transmit songs to the kiosk at Snoops via high-speed Internet lines.


My goal is to get at least 20 machines out there this year, Bingle says.


The beauty of the system is that as the networks private music library growsit stood last week at 376 CDs and more than 4,300 songsso does the music selection on every jukebox thats linked to the system, he says.


By comparison, a typical modern CD-based jukebox holds only around 100 CDs, and the only way to add new ones is by removing others, he says. A couple of large companies, TouchTunes Music Corp. and Rowe-eCast, have been marketing or getting ready to market high-tech jukeboxes that store 750 to 3,000 songs on internal hard drives, Bingle says. That type of system also has drawbacks, though, he contends, because of limited storage capacity and maintenance responsibilities it places on client establishments.


Although Songbird will focus initially on jukebox applications, its multifunction, kiosk-style network system could be adapted easily for other public-venue uses, such as selling concert tickets, Bingle asserts.


Mackey, who raises alpacas north of Spokane in addition to operating Snoops, says he thinks the potential for the Songbird system is just unlimited. Its basically us getting the word out there, getting the product out there, letting people see it.


Bingle and Mackey have been developing the system over about the last 11 months through a Spokane company Mackey owns called Dan D. Mackey Investments Inc.


They havent incorporated Songbird yet, but say they plan to do sospinning it off from Mackey Investments into a separate entityas soon as they move beyond beta testing and begin shipping the jukeboxes.


Heres how the Songbird jukebox works:


The user inserts a $1 bill or larger denomination into a bill acceptor above the display screen. The machine displays the number of credits given (four credits, or songs, per dollar), and also a music trivia question for the user to answer. If the user answers correctly, another song credit is awarded.


The user then can select the desired music by any of several search methodsstyle, song title, artist, local artists, most popularusing software that Bingle wrote and has copyrighted. With the touch screen, they can scroll, for example, through chosen categories or target selections quickly by jumping to a particular letter in the alphabet.


Displayed images of album covers help make the process visually entertaining. When a user selects an album, all the cuts on that CD appear on the screen, and the user can choose the song or songs he or she wants to hear. Bingle claims that differs from other digital jukebox systems, which dont show the entire content of CDs due to storage limitations.


The most popular search method allows users to choose from the songs played most frequently at that jukeboxs location, and even will display how many times a song has been played and the date and time it was last played. Users eager to hear a song they have selected also can call up a display that shows exactly how many and which songs are queued up ahead of theirs.


The Songbird system


also can be programmed to display on the jukebox monitors such things as in-house food and drink specials or advertisements for other neighborhood businesses, which Bingle believes holds strong revenue potential. In addition, the system is able to provide detailed song-demand statistical information, which he believes could be valuable to the recording industry if it were applied on a broad scale.


Once Songbird takes full flight, it expects to charge client establishments that install its jukeboxes around $75 per week, but allow them to keep 50 percent of the revenue the units generate, which is comparable to the rates vendors currently charge for older-generation jukeboxes, he says.


Mackey emphasizes, though, that those anticipated charges are tentative and could change. Songbirds weekly charge will include the cost of the high-speed DSL Internet service that the high-bandwidth streaming technology requires, as well as all applicable music-licensing fees.


A music and computer background


Bingle, who came up with the idea for the Songbird, works as a computer programmer for Superior Consultant Co., a Detroit company that does work for large clients mostly in the health-care industry.


He says he lives in Spokane, works remotely from his home when possible, and travels to clients facilities when necessary. He was a systems analyst here for Sacred Heart Medical Center for 14 years, until 1997, after which he worked briefly as an independent consultant before joining Superior.


He also has been a musician since an early age, playing guitar, violin, and the drums, performing with local rock-and-roll bands such as The Raves in the 1980s and Champagne Alley in the early 1990s. Not surprisingly, independent Pacific Northwest bands are well-represented in Songbirds music library.


Bingle describes Songbird as one piece of a vision he developed a decade ago, based on his own frustrations as a musician, for bringing the recording industry into the digital age and simultaneously giving independent artists more national exposure.


In the early 1990s, he says, he sent hundreds of letters to record companies, prodding them to adopt digital technologies through which they could disseminate new releases at much lower cost than through traditional hard-copy means. That potential benefit has been demonstrated in recent years through the popularity of MP3 compression technology, he says.


Being a musician, I wanted a better outlet for what I was doing and what my friends were doing, Bingle says. Yet, record companies were reluctant to take chances on many unproven musicians because, through the expensive distribution methods they were accustomed to, they were losing money on eight of every 10 releases, he says.


They would put a whole lot of money into it (a particular release) without knowing whether anybody was going to like it at all, he adds.


Bingle claims that his pleas for modernization of that distribution method fell mostly on deaf ears, though, probably partly because public awareness of digital business opportunities was still in its infancy.


The word Internet almost didnt exist back then, he says.


He shelved his ideas until deciding to approach Mackey in May of last year to seek financial support for the digital jukebox venture. Bingle says he developed the on-demand music service to run on the Linux operating system and wrote the application software using programming tools available mostly for free in the public domain. Even the software interface for the bill acceptor had to be written from scratch, he says.


Bingle and Mackey came up with initial design concepts for the jukebox by tearing the computer hard drive out of a video game at Snoops and converting the unit for music-selection use. They then refined their design, relying on Mackeys expertise with arcade games, and sought out fabricators and vendors, including local companies where possible, to manufacture or supply the units various components.


The Songbird jukebox bears little resemblance to the flashy mechanical jukeboxes of yesteryear: its housed in a smallish, nondescript cabinet more comparable in looks to a free-standing ATM machine. However, a bright red upper housing and the crisp images displayed on the 19-inch color monitor appear to be alluring enough to catch the eye of music addicts looking for a quick fix.