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This article is more than 1 year old

An Internet of Things music thingy? What, you’ve already got one?

What’s Lewis’s shtick? A daft stick it seems

Omnifone and Silicon.com founder Rob Lewis is back with another music venture – this time bundling funky sounds with hardware.

The Electric Jukebox service combines a streaming service with two bits of hardware: a Chromecast-style HDMI dongle for your telly, and a motion controller.

The initial setup cost is £179 for a year’s music. After that, though, it’s cheaper than a typical music streaming sub, with recurring charges of £60 per year.

Founder Lewis argues that streaming services like Spotify are too nerdy, and bills it as “an Internet of Things for music”. But, the tech and music industries have largely solved this part of the problem: either by throwing music from a phone to a hi-fi or TV via DLNA or AirPlay, or by in-device apps on set top boxes or TVs.

Bundling music with hardware doesn’t have a great history, either. Readers with good memories may be able to recall Datz’s Music Lounge, which offered DRM-free downloads for £99 a year, but which crapped out less than a year later.

That was a response to Nokia’s Comes With Music, which bundled songs with a Nokia phone. With piracy, rampant punters didn’t find it hard to find music in the first place, and the proposition required a serious commitment to Nokia phones, just when Nokia phones stopped being the bees knees.

Like Apple TV, Electric Jukebox does voice search

Nevertheless, like Lewis’s last music launch Rara, it’s backed by big money and star power, like Robbie Williams, Sheryl Crow and er, Stephen Fry. How can it possibly fail? ®

Bootnote

Aurous has been sued by the Recording Industry Ass. Of America for copyright infringement less than a month after being launched.

Aurous claims to be “artist friendly” – but is accused of using copyright-infringing material from YouTube and Soundcloud, allegedly without permission or payment. The 20-year-old developer behind the software Andrew Sampson says, er, that you can now "tip" the artists with Bitcoin. ®

 

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