AMOA members will continue to receive a substantial per-box discount after they buy their first license. On the second and subsequent JLO licenses, association members pay $27 less per box than nonmembers.

In other music news, the music industry is celebrating 120 years since the manufacture and installation of the first jukebox. In late 1889, Louis Glass installed his nickel-in-the-slot machine at the Palais Royale Saloon, located in San Francisco. 

The first prototype of the modern jukebox was modeled after a recording device developed by inventor Thomas Edison. It played on a single wax cylinder. The resulting popularity created a worldwide jukebox craze and the coin- operated music and amusements industry, which led to the modern recorded music industry.

Historic sources say that Glass and his business partner William S. Arnold developed the nickel-in-the-slot by attaching four stethoscope-style “listening tubes” to an Edison Class M electric phonograph. The phonograph was installed in an oak cabinet, and they affixed a coin mechanism. Customers listened by putting the tubes in their ears; there was no open-air broadcast of the recordings.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Glass was the most famous operator in America, and made a speech at one of the earliest national operator’s conventions in Chicago. Understanding the basic tenets of operating, Glass encouraged his fellow operators to maintain ownership of their popular machines, warning them not to sell equipment directly to locations.

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