Hacking the Starbuck's Muzak Machine?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday July 17, 2002 @02:11AM 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?"

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The CD has 90-100 songs in it by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-17 02:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

If the CD has between 90 and 100 songs on it, there is no way it is a regular CD, it has to be some kind of compressed music.

It means that the guys would have first to find out the kind of compression (mp3, wma, ogg...) and only then try to make a CD "with music whose original record they own (just to make clear the fair use)".

If it is some kind of compressed file, it may have some kind of authorization file, that may be encrypted...