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Home / News / Electric Jukebox turns your telly into a music streamer

Electric Jukebox turns your telly into a music streamer

Listen to 29 million ad-free songs at “half the price of Spotify”

What’s this brightly-coloured wand? A home karaoke microphone?

No, but you’re right in thinking it’s music-related. This is the controller for Electric Jukebox, a freshly-launched new music streaming service – with a difference.

And that difference is…?

That it works solely through your television. You hook a dongle up to a TV via HDMI, then connect it to your home’s Wi-Fi. Once that’s done, you can use the TV Stick controller to access over 29 million songs at CD quality – that’s almost as many as you’ll find in Apple Music or Spotify’s libraries – and listen to them through your TV.

But my TV’s speakers are tinnier than a tuna cannery!

Well, then, get a better telly.

But you make a good point in that, clearly, this isn’t going to be for everyone. Electric Jukebox is pitched at the mass market, at people who just want a simplified streaming service right there in front of them. To that end it features voice search to make finding your favourite tunes faster, a cursor-based interface and playlists curated by the light entertainment likes of Robbie Williams and Alesha Dixon rather than uber-cool tastemakers.

I hope it’s a bargain, then

Well, kind of. An Electric Jukebox Premium Music Pass costs £52 for a year, while Spotify/Apple Music/Google Play Music are all £119.88 – a significant saving. However, that’s really how much it’ll cost in your second year, as in the first year you’ll have to buy the remote and dongle, plus the subscription, for a package total of £169.

Also, you can’t access Electric Jukebox on any devices except your telly, while Spotify et al work on a huge bunch of devices. So for now, the jury’s out on whether this is truly a competitor to the trad streaming services, or merely for people who want something totally different.

Look out for Stuff‘s full review soon.

Profile image of Sam Kieldsen Sam Kieldsen Contributor

About

Tech journalism's answer to The Littlest Hobo, I've written for a host of titles and lived in three different countries in my 15 years-plus as a freelancer. But I've always come back home to Stuff eventually, where I specialise in writing about cameras, streaming services and being tragically addicted to Destiny.

Areas of expertise

Cameras, drones, video games, film and TV