Digital juke maker Ecast closes doors, shuts down music

Breaking news from Replay Magazine is that Ecast, one of the big digital downloading jukebox makers and music content providers has suddenly closed it's doors and gone out of business.

Ecast Inc. Closes Its Doors, Shuts Down Music Network
(Posted March 1, 2012 -- 5PM)

It’s a sad day for the jukebox biz.

Ecast Inc., the first company to introduce broadband music for the digital jukebox, has closed its doors for good. The shocking move leaves their operator base, which some say numbers near 7,000 units on the street, scrambling to find a replacement source of music for their locations. All 55 employees of the company have also been let go as of today.

Scott Walker, who served as VP at Ecast, said the company has been in ongoing negotiations with outside partners as well as competitors to strike a deal that would keep the doors open. However, nothing came together before time and money ran out. “This was not our intention,” said Walker, speaking on behalf of the company earlier today. “We tried everything we would to avoid this happening. We regret the position this puts many of our loyal customers in.”

Ecast’s network has also gone dark, meaning operators can no longer access music on the server or any of other features of Ecast Central. Credit cards processing is also disabled.

Walker said the local music on individual jukebox hard drives will remain available for location patrons “for a limited period of time,” but Ecast is encouraging operators to act quickly in making arrangements for another source of music. Ecast execs called as many distributors and customers as possible, but news of the shutdown came suddenly and so some customers were not officially notified.

Yep, went past a popular location this afternoon and their machine right near the front window had a large piece of paper taped over it's screen.

Let's face a fact; when you cede control of your system to a third party your business become hostage to external negotiations and politics over which you have no control.

Where I live, on the upper east side of Manhattan, these machines seem to be slowly disappearing after being nearly everywhere a couple of years ago. Unfortunately when they go it doesn't seem that the location owners want anything to replace them.

So I am left wondering if this is just a fad that outlived it's time and became too costly ($1-1.50/play) or if it just represents the larger trend of people no-longer willing to pay for music.

Rob/NYC

I never did like the fact that the digital jukebox manufacturers had their hand in the operators cashbox, a third 'partner' so to speak. Some of the jukebox operators still running CD jukeboxes are doing quite nicely around here.

I think this crap is a hoot!
The typical meltdown of "E" crap after a short love affair with people's wallets.
Short-lived is the name of the game these days...
Superficiality reigns.... then reality crashes.

Nothing like the old, slow-paced days of living in a predominently honest world.

Bring back the "45" jukbox! - 'cause analog just sounds better!

Hi,

I tend to agree with MattTech and think that it was only a matter of time before the steam would run out of this type of operation.
These days people are walking about playing their MP3 players in every environment; so why would the industry think that people would be prepaired to pay for music.

No doubt that someone will have made a fortune out of digital/downloadable music but as always most amusement operators would have been lucky to even cover their costs.

Regards
Alan

Alan Hood
ami-man
UK

Alan and all, it goes even beyond MP3's now.

Nearly everytime I go to a restaurant location I see someone watching video on their IPhones etc. These are either streamed or dl'ed and loaded into the player and of course another source of free music.

This is a recent phenomenon in that three years ago this was rare, but now even the dishwashers and cooks (mostly Mexican) use them. Its another nail in the coffin for aural-only media. I know two executives in radio and follow the industry news. These people are just beginning to realize what is headed their way...and they have the same clueless look on their faces that the three guys I knew who worked for Sony/Epic did in early 2000 right after Napster debuted. All three of these people were fairly far up the corporate ladder but were washed out over the next 14 months.

One person showed me data that as of 2010 the sale of physical music media (CD) has fallen 63% since 2001 -so you can see where this is headed.

As for the machines themselves, I suspect they'll either be hacked to run a new OS w/out the net (Too bad RIAA-ASCAP but you were partly responsible here) Or, one of the remaining providers will develop a retrofit for them to use on their service.

BTW: I visited the place I mentioned in the earlier post, the machine was now covered with a black garbage bag, but it's a Touch tunes and was not out of order. The owner was just not willing to pay the guarantee anymore and is having it removed.

I didn't get the impression it was worth offering them something to replace it.

FWIW: Here is a more detailed article :

http://www.vendingtimes.com/ME2/dirmod. ... 80ABC0310E

The bottom line here is that a lot of people got burned in this fiasco.

Rob/NYC

I've heard from a few industry people already today. This caught Touchtunes and Rowe/Ami/Rockola off guard. It even surprised them. They are scrambling to assemble retrofit kits to convert the ecast machines over to their systems. A few years ago VIEW made a kit to convert the Rowe CD100 series of CD boxes over to the Ecast system. Add the 3,000 View conversions on top of the 7,000 dedicated Ecast jukes and you've now got 10,000 jukes suddenly going offline!

I've already heard that the credit card companies have immediately terminated credit card processing from Ecast jukes. The ecast website will disappear on March 31.

I still hear from locations that had to get rid of the downloading jukeboxes because they were actually making less money than with a traditional CD jukebox. I've also seen locations completely eliminate the jukebox altogether because customers were simply bringing their own music in their ipods or other electronic devices.

Since Touchtunes and Rowe were clueless about Ecast going down, I wonder how long they will be around?

Hi All,
Prior to, or at about the same time as rumors were going around about a "new type" of "jukebox", I got a phone call from a guy who said he wanted to "pick my brain" about the jukebox biz,--and he was willing to pay me for it !
So, I went to an obviously rented office in the Sunset district of San Francisco ( which is where Ecast is located). I spent a few hours with these guys, they had a very crude "demo" unit up and mostly working. They had not incorporated any coin stuff yet, and really did not understand the relationship of the Manufacture, Distributor, Operator in the biz--They wanted to direct sell locations. I told them that this was "not new" and that as far as I knew, it had never worked well.
Their thinking was, that since there would no longer be a need for a "route person", and very little need for a repair person ( they claimed that they would make it "modular" so that anyone who could turn a screwdriver, could replace anything in the machine in fifteen, or less minutes), they could supply the location the machine at zero cost, and sell advertising, and give the location a small cut of the sales--
I never heard from them again--perhaps this was what became of Ecast--I dono ??
Ron Rich

A few years ago there was the jukesdirect.com and Powerhouse Vending who were trying to direct sell to locations downloader jukeboxes with the ecast system inside. Many operators were pissed when they found out ecast was involved and threatened to pull all their ecast machines.

Oh, and don't forget that even Wurlitzer is using the ecast system in their downloaders.

I have heard "rumors" that "ouchTunes" has also attempted, or has done, direct location sales---I am not sure this is true or false--I know that their rep. denied it to me---might be just the competition attempting to "stir the pot "? Ron Rich

I wonder if there will be a sudden flood of Ecast jukes for sale on ebay?

My 2 cents... I saw an Ecast jukebox in Las Vegas around 1998-99. It was a modern space age looking cabinet. I had been in the business almost 20 years, and I wasn't sure it was a jukebox till I got close to it. Ecast didn't get far with it so they partnered with the best at the time (ROWE) and basically put the
Ecast system in a Rowe download box. The downside was broadband only, which wasn't as plentiful then. Then Ecast sold their system to other jukebox
makers, which Rowe didn't like, so Rowe changed to their own system. Bring back the 45 rpm records and machines.

BJ,
I think Ecast saw the writing on the wall, when the company that owns Rowe, began supplying music in Europe. A little while longer, and Rowe's exclusive contract ended. That's when Ecast began selling to other companies. Ron Rich

While we're on the subject of "canned music", who supplies the (free) background music for convenience stores such as Wawa, 7-11, etc?
Also department stores..

Years ago I know Muzak (sp) did.

Matt
"Muzac" or "Muzak"--I dono either--- is still in biz--- I see their trucks on the road all the time----
Ron Rich