By Alison Roach
Photo by Mark Burnham
The Virtuo has been installed above the dance floor, on the platform with the DJ booth, as a new central feature of the pub
If you’ve ever been at the Highland Pub and found yourself wishing they would play anything other than that Rihanna song that you’ve already heard four times that day, you’re in luck. The Highland Pub has recently installed a new jukebox that will allow students to play what they want, when they want it — for a price.
The Virtuo SmartJuke is the Highland’s shiny new toy, and lets students play songs, take pictures of themselves, sing karaoke, and post to social media networks about their night out. The Virtuo has been installed above the dance floor, on the platform with the DJ booth, as a new central feature of the pub.
Meaghan Wilson, the external relations officer for the SFSS, brought the machine to SFU. “I consider it to be a human sized iPad . . . It’s very cool looking and it’s very big,” said Wilson. She thinks of the Virtuo as a new social tool for the campus, explaining that “every time a student takes a picture or purchases a song on the Virtuo, that information can be shared on a social network. They can show off to their friends how social they are.”
The Virtuo comes at no cost to the pub itself, and in fact a portion of the profits made will go back into the SFSS. Depending on how much the Virtuo brings in for the month, the revenue is shared between the pub and Amped Amusements, the company who owns and installs the jukeboxes. The larger the profit, the larger the split. For example, if the Virtuo nets $250 for the month, the SFSS receives 10 per cent of the profit. If it generates $900 or more, the SFSS takes 40 per cent. The only thing that will cost the Highland Pub is the karaoke feature, which runs at $129 for a night when it’s in use.
Wilson sees this feature as having huge potential for special events or themed nights hosted by the pub. Costs to the students using the machine are fairly standard, running at $1 a song and $2 for a picture. The machine can also upload pictures to email or social networking sites, or instantly print them out.
And if you’re worried that the whole thing will turn into that one guy playing Journey the entire night, the Highland has full control of the Virtuo by remote. The jukebox can be turned off or paused to allow for hockey games or special events, and the type of music can even be limited.
“Songs can be filtered by style, time or artist; for example, no explicit lyrics, or no rap before 9 p.m. Or no country ever, but Kid Rock is okay,” explained Wilson.
Another feature of the Virtuo is that students can actually control it remotely as well, through their smartphones. Through an app called myTouchTunes Mobile, pub patrons can choose and play their selected songs without even giving up their seats. The new jukebox is great for the Highland as well, since when patrons choose songs or take pictures, they also make posts to their Facebook or Twitter saying what they’re doing and where they are, so it acts as a new way of advertising for the pub. Wilson says that when she brought the idea to the SFSS executive, “It was such an easy sell because it’s such a cool feature for the pub.”
While the Virtuo is now installed, the online features are not yet available. “The one issue is that we need the Ethernet cord to connect it, which we need SFU facilities to do for us,” said Wilson. She hopes that this will be done in the next few days. For now, the Virtuo is running only the songs that are stored on the machine, since the internet is needed to access the larger online library. Once that is done however, virtually any song you can think of will be available. The Virtuo fits in with Wilson’s goals of bringing more social media to campus. As she put it, “I think in today’s age, everything is about sharing, and it’s not official until it’s Facebook official.”
