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Hacking the Starbuck's Muzak Machine?

Posted by Cliff on from the fighing-the-corporate-sanctioned-music-lists dept.

llamaluvr asks: "My friend is employed at a Starbucks coffeehouse, and he told me about a system they use for controlling what kind of music is played in the store. The machine can only play a particular type of CD, which contains 90-100 songs that "expire" after awhile, and is appearantly compiled/ produced by Hear Music, a subsidary of Starbucks. PlayNetwork is in charge of the the hardware. Anyway, he and his fellow employees are sick of Starbucks lame playlists, and they can't use normal CDs, as the machine tells them that the CDs are "expired". Does anybody know anything about how this system works? Is it at all possible to make a CD on your own that can be played on these machines?"

1 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. play network disc contents and a small hack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    We use the same system in the retail store I work in as the systems monkey. I went through the same dilema as this starbucks guy and thought I'd throw the cd into a cdrom to see whats on it. Theres a
    data.txt
    playdisc.aud

    data.txt reveals this.....

    [Playlist]
    Version=3.1
    ID=219091
    Title=Your company name DISC 20
    Programs=3
    Songs=389
    ProgramAdvance=0
    SongA dvance=0
    Expiration=2003/02/12
    StartTime=05:00
    EndTime=24:00

    [Program1]
    ID=13522
    Title=Club & Dance & Pop 1
    StartTime=05:00
    EndTime=08:30
    ProgramPlay=Nex t
    MaxPlayTime=0
    SongPlay=Random
    Songs=49
    Comme rcials=0

    [Program2]
    ID=13523
    Title=Modern Adult Contemporary
    StartTime=08:30
    EndTime=21:00
    Prog ramPlay=Next
    MaxPlayTime=0
    SongPlay=Random
    Song s=170
    Commercials=0

    and so on, it lists the songs that are in each program too. As you can see, modern adult contemporary(translated "crap") is played most of the day. However, there is the redeeming club and pop that starts after a certain time of day. I considered replacing the unit with a cd changer and choosing my own music but instead just changed the time of day programed into the player so it would play the club and pop music earlier in the day. You'll have to take one of the discs home to find out what your discs are configured like but if you want to change the time on the player(there has to be a disc in it to do this) press the menu button repeatedly until "press select to set the current time of day" is displayed on the menu screen, hit select then use the view button to change the number, hit select again to accept the change then use the view button to do the same with minutes if desired...........

    hope this helps ya out.