Knowing about Music Vending Machine

What is music vending machine?
Vending machines that allow customers to browse and listen to the music of their choice are known as Music Vending Machines. These days, they are also used to record customer’s music selection onto a CD (Compact Disk).

How music vending machine works?
A hard drive is provided in the vending machine that contains information on digitally stored musical collections. Machine microprocessor then records the choices entered by the customer using the keyboard. A display panel in the front of the vending machine is used to show the catalog of all music files available and those selected by the customer. Once all the selections have been made, customer places the credit card in the machine slot, which is then read by the machine’s card reader. This information is sent back to the microprocessor which after necessary checks and validations passes the control to the CD writer. The CD writer picks up a blank CD from the CD storage and writes the selections onto the compact disk. Later, the CD is passed on to the customer using the dispenser. This complete process of burning the CD doesn’t take more than five minutes.

Advantages of music vending machine
The major advantages of this vending machine are –
1. Large Pool of Music Files: These machines use hard drives that can store up to 10,000 music files without compromising on the quality. The audio files can be from any genre and can also contain foreign music.
2. Customizing the CD: The customer can also customize the CD that is being burnt. CD labels can either be a photograph of an artist or a picture already stored in the vending machine. There are machines available that can take snaps of the customer and can then put them on the CD being burnt. There is also an option to print text on the CD (which is entered using the keyboard).
3. Excellent Quality: Most of these machines do not compress the music files and hence the sound quality is superior. They employ one-to-one digital transfer of the files and so the quality is at par with original CDs available in the market.