This thread could easily cross-post with the hate pit thread, but I am wondering if anybody else is as troubled as I am by the fact that these loathsome "advances" in technology are multiplying like Starbucks throughout bars everywhere.
Even though (or because, perhaps) Boston does tend to ruin everything, I am finding more and more once-great local watering holes caving into this shitty, costly, culturally destructive trend. For me, a bar's jukebox is often the main selling point on the (increasingly rare) occasions when I have the need and the means to go out, park myself on a stool, buy a couple of cold ones and hear some good tunes. The jukebox has long been the fingerprint of a bar's character -- haunts like JJ Foley's, the Model Cafe, Charlie's Kitchen, (the late) PJ Kilroy's (formerly Father's II), (the late) Rathskellar, and (the late) Cambridgeport Saloon had exemplary jukebox selections carefully and reliably curated by each bar's staff -- but the internet jukeboxes, while they portray the illusion of wider access to music, just rip people off by the song. And for a song, no less; no more 2 or 3 plays for a dollar -- it's $1 per tune for the songs in their limited preset catalog, and $2 per tune if you want to download other stuff from their wider yet still woefully inadequate, indie-/non-commercial-blind database. You can find some good stuff, but you better be packing at least quadruple or more of your old jukebox budget if you want to hear anything remotely good. And forget it if you want to go into the Model now and hear that great Motorhead comp or non-Back In Black ACDC tunes or more obscure local fare (Roadsaw, Mung, the list just goes on) that the bartenders had loaded onto their old rig; the Model has gone to the dark side. Same with Foley's. It's fucking heartbreaking. Charlie's Kitchen might actually be one of the only holdouts against the trend among the bars I mentioned above. For shame, other bars. For shame.
