Patent ID: 7987282

Claim:
A jukebox system for playing a musical piece, comprising: a central jukebox server including: a mass storage that stores a plurality of musical pieces, a server network card that receives requests for said musical pieces, a plurality of jukebox devices, each including: an audio unit for playing the musical piece, an interface unit that effects communication with a device user, a payment device for receiving payment in exchange for playing musical pieces, a device network card linked to said server network card, and a device multitask operating system module operatively coupled with respectively the audio unit, said interface unit, said payment device, a switching device and said device network card, wherein said device multitask operating system has at least one hard disk access management task in which the order to play a musical piece resulting from a selection is processed as a hard disk sequential access task which makes the device network card send a request for said musical pieces, in the form of a hard disk sequential access request, to the server network card, wherein the switching device is configured to determine whether the selection of the musical piece requested is to be supplied to all the jukebox devices for concurrent playback or only to the device which transmitted the request, and wherein each jukebox device is configured to communicate with the central server to indicate whether the central server is available to transfer one or more musical pieces.