Rolling Your Own Jukebox System?

Nurgled asks: "I've been tasked with implementing a client-server jukebox-like system using normal bits of PC equipment. The general idea is to have a central server with all of the music available and then one or more clients which have a kiosk-type interface for browsing the available music and enqueueing it on the central server, all connected to a normal ethernet network. It's important that none of the kiosks should be able to perform any operation other than enqueue new tracks, but it would also be handy if there was a separate administrative console where tracks can be skipped, which would then be available to the venue owners. The kiosks don't have very fancy hardware and most don't have touch-screens, so ideally it should support both mouse and keyboard-based operation. Is there any software already out there that can do this, or am I going to have to write my own? I'd prefer an integrated solution, but I also wouldn't mind separate client and server software as long as I can tweak both to make them work together. Any ideas?"

Comments

What about old school?

[cei]

Feel free to rate this Offtopic...

A couple of folks have made suggestions that answer the original post. I'm more curious about what the communication protocols for the jukeboxes that were used in diners in the 50s. Each remote station (table/booth) could add a song to the queue of the master jukebox. They'd have to transmit the song ID to the master. Was this done serial? Parallel? What was the encoding used? And how did the master jukebox implement a FIFO queue?

Curious, and fairly ignorant of pre-solid-state electronics.