Song & Soda

The Register has an interesting article on a UK vending machine manufacturer, who seeks to turn the regular juke box in a digital music download device and a coke machine at the same time. Get a soda while you download a song! The target audience is said to be impulse buyers, who see music as being more disposable.

There are some major barriers to overcome, as the article points out. Not only does the music catalog still have to be licensed, there's also a need for a "universal" DRM, offering the songs in all possible formats. The developer expects that the mobile phone market will be most likely to come with a cross-platform DRM solution. After that it will be only a matter of time before the Urban Digital Vending service, as the concept is called, will offer a cold coke and a song to go with it. Shortly followed by the first hacked coke machine, I guess.