Click here for the 60 second  piece about EL DJ produced by Wired Magazine for the CBS Radio Network:
Wired Radio. August, 2003
http://www.heingartner.com/wired_radio/august2003/__MP3_Jukebox.mp3

26,000-Hit Wonder Keeps It Hopping
by Johanna Jainchill
The New York Times. September 4, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/04/technology/circuits/04juke.html

On a rainy Monday night at 7, when most of the East Village bars in Manhattan are empty, a steady crowd is rolling into Hi Fi. Drinks are two for one until 8, but that is only one of the reasons many patrons choose the otherwise nondescript watering hole out of the many on Avenue A. They are there for EL DJ, an MP3 jukebox with 26,000 songs to choose from.
Mike Stuto, the 36-year-old owner of Hi Fi and the co-creator of EL DJ, says it has the biggest selection of any jukebox in the world. "The reason it's a great idea is because it's a simple idea," he said.
Mr. Stuto's basic idea was to digitize his music collection and make it available in a jukebox that held far more than the standard 100 albums. EL DJ, or Extra Large Digital Jukebox, includes tracks from 1,798 full-length CD's in Mr. Stuto's collection. Record companies might be pleased to know that he copied the albums individually onto the hard drive rather than downloading them Napster-style.
The artists range from the Replacements to De La Soul to Wilco. As with conventional jukeboxes, Mr. Stuto said, royalties are paid on the songs played.
The tall, narrow wooden box that holds EL DJ is outfitted with a bill accepter and a keypad for making selections. Customers use a trackball mouse to navigate through the albums, which are displayed randomly but can be searched alphabetically. Until a sign was attached to identify it, the jukebox, made from a refurbished PC and some off-the-shelf additions, was frequently confused for a cash machine. A dollar buys three songs on weekdays and two songs on weekends.
The jukebox's popularity is reflected in the lag time between pay and tune. "You can wait three hours and not hear your songs," said Charles Bottomley, who was at Hi Fi celebrating the birthday of a VH1.com colleague.
As a onetime owner of Brownies, a renowned live rock venue that stood on Hi Fi's site for more than a decade, Mr. Stuto wanted the music in his new bar to be delivered in a unique way. He turned to Timothy Roven, a former Web designer, to help him build what he wanted.
"Other stuff out there is ill conceived in that it overuses technology that's not relevant," Mr. Stuto said, referring to the few MP3 jukeboxes for bars, which typically come preprogrammed with a choice of 200 popular CD's and allow additional songs to be downloaded from the Internet by customers.
Mr. Stuto, a self-described music snob, was not about to fill EL DJ with Top 40 selections or allow just any music to be played at Hi Fi. His collection is eclectic and heavy on rock. Since he has all the room in the digital world, he can offer 17 full-length Rolling Stones albums instead of a greatest-hits compilation, and samplings of local bands that otherwise have little exposure. Music lovers have taken notice.
"Outside of the charming bartenders, it's the major draw," said Galen Polivka, a Hi Fi bartender himself, drinking there on his night off. During happy hours, "it's kind of a scholarly vibe," he said. "People want to impress their friends by picking the most obscure thing they possibly can."
If a song is excessively chosen it will be marked "overplayed," sparing anyone from making a choice considered common. Victims of overplay include Coldplay's "Yellow" and the Pixies' "Debaser."
The idea of identifying such songs was one of many originating with customers. From the response, Mr. Roven and Mr. Stuto concluded that there were two marketable products in EL DJ: a software program to equip home computers with similar capabilities, and a commercial version of the jukebox for bars, complete with computer hardware and kiosk.
They started a company and enlisted a code writer, and the three have spent seven months fine-tuning both versions. The home rendition will be available for purchase at ELDJ.com in the next month or so for about $20, they say, and the full-size jukeboxes, yet to be priced, will be made on a custom basis.
Mr. Stuto predicts that his idea will help the jukebox make a comeback. Kerry Segrave, a cultural historian who wrote "Jukeboxes: An American Social History" (McFarland, 2002), disagrees.
"Jukeboxes will never have the popularity they once had," Mr. Segrave said. In the 1920's, he said, people went to bars for the jukebox. "Now you don't notice it. It's in the background like a bottle of whiskey."
And not all bargoers want the MP3 format to take over. "I'm all for technology and the availability of more choices, but there's something nostalgic about flipping through," said Mariah Ehlert of Brooklyn, hanging out on a Friday night at 7B, a bar with a traditional jukebox just a few blocks from Hi Fi. "I miss the 45's, too."
Others are less skeptical.
"I'm addicted, totally addicted," said Vicky Karan, a former East Village resident visiting from San Francisco, while navigating EL DJ's glut of choices. "Even my mom knows how to use the Internet. Everyone knows how to use a mouse. This has finally caught up with what people are doing on a normal day."

The 17,000-Hit Wonder
by Mark Yarm
Wired. August, 2003
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/play.html

Last year, when Mike Stuto opened the bar HiFi in New York's East Village, he couldn't imagine settling for a jukebox that played the standard hundred albums. So he built one that plays 1,700. Now he boasts that EL-DJ, the PC-powered MP3-playing machine he developed with partner Timothy Roven, is "the best jukebox on the planet." And he knows his music: For more than a decade he ran Brownie's, the late, great indie rock dive that was in the same space as HiFi.James Westman
EL-DJ, the MP3 jukebox that's packing them in. Every component in EL-DJ is off-the-shelf: The arcade-style cabinet holds a 900-MHz Pentium III system that's networked to a pair of 160-Gbyte Snap Servers in the basement. But the interface that allows users to scroll from ABBA to the Zombies is custom-made, and Stuto and Roven have formed their own company, Empire Digital Music Systems, to market it to bars, clubs, and the odd music geek with a couple thousand CDs weighing down his shelves. Reactions from bar patrons have been encouraging, and members of hip New York bands like Radio 4 and the Liars have been in to DJ. "It was pretty consuming," remembers Liars guitarist Aaron Hemphill. "I spent 45 minutes digging through all of those albums."
A buck gets you three tunes - the jukebox standard - and Stuto pays a share to ASCAP and BMI. Meanwhile, patrons often bring in paper to scribble down the names of songs they like, he says. "I'm sure I help sell records."

Liquid City
by C. Spartos
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0312/spartos.php
March 19 - 25, 2003

The Digital Age has finally dawned in that darkest of places: the local bar. We don't mean the high-tech speed dating that goes on at REMOTE (327 Bowery, 212-228-0228). Nor are we referring to DJ Andrew Andrew's Tuesday-night iPod programming parties at APT (419 West 13th Street, 212-414-4245)— although we're getting warmer. What we're talking about is the digital jukebox. Yes, the magical musical machine Arthur Fonzarelli delighted you with in your youth has evolved to a higher plane, transmuting into something far greater than even the inventor of the diner tabletop jukebox could have dreamed.
When co-owner Mike Stuto decided to transform Brownies—the longtime East Village rock club—into a bar last summer, many were aghast. Avenue A did not need another lounge! Right? Wrong. HIFI (169 Avenue A, 212-420-8392) is an unqualified hit—and not just with a bunch of frat boys. The draw, of course, is "EL DJ," a jukebox with more than 1600 albums' worth of MP3s. It's heavy on indie- and punk-rock selections, with local faves like the Rapture and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs well represented, which may explain why there's an actual line of people waiting to stuff money into the thing (three plays cost $1). "People hog it more to look, really," explains a bartender. Maybe, but the impatient may want to try the Wednesday-night "Played Out" party, where local bands like Ted Leo/Pharmacists personally program HAL, we mean EL DJ. Or just kick back and enjoy the weekday two-for-one happy hour till 8 p.m. and the VH1 Classics playing on the TV. Truly a rock critic's wet dream: We've even spied a few Spin journos hanging here.

The 21st-Century Jukebox
by Philip Henken
New York Press. November 19, 2002
http://www.nypress.com/15/43/nyc/nyc3.cfm
Volume 15, Issue 43

Cruise past the "Club Formerly Known as Brownies," aka HiFi, on Ave. A and you’ll catch the claim "Best Jukebox on the Planet" on their chalkboard outside.
Surprisingly, it just might be true.
The actual machine isn’t much to look at: a monitor in a lacquered wooden casing, a trackball/mouse and a keypad, plus the ubiquitous dollar-bill slot, kind of a no-frills arcade game.
But Brownies co-owner Mike Stuto and a techie friend/hired gun have actually built it from scratch with the guts of a PC and Stuto’s own extensive music collection. What it is is the first fully functional MP3 jukebox, an enormous, alphabetized archive of songs.
Virtually any song by any band you’re looking to play is here. If you’re dying to hear "Alec Eiffel" by the Pixies, the jukebox is not only packing the CD Surfer Rosa, it’s got all the Pixies’ LPs. Not to mention a wide selection of hiphop, electronica, soul and whatever else. Rather than having to rotate anything out to accommodate new discs, the MP3 format makes it possible to tack new files on without removing the existing songs. It’s an audiophile’s wet dream, like having access to your own collection at home with the added bonus of actually leaving the house and socializing.
I’d initially interviewed Stuto this summer about the Brownies closing. When I meet him at HiFi, he seems a lot more laidback and personable (now that he’s not coping with the rigors of a booking schedule). My question at the time of Brownies’ closing was "Why now?" With all the media attention on New York as "New Rock City" this year, it seemed like prime time for live venues, a potential relief from the doldrums of the late Giuliani era.
"All the hype about New York didn’t do a thing for us," he’d told me back then. "There was no impact financially whatsoever. We did just as well before, and we could keep going, we could pay our bills. The reason [for closing] is basically just that I don’t want to. There was no reason to keep doing what we were doing in this kind of small space–my heart wasn’t in it anymore. It was just time. It’s really intense and I’m not 22 anymore. I didn’t want to end up hating everyone and everyone hating me just to keep this thing going.
"There are 20 different stories on the street about why we’re closing," Stuto had gone on to say. "That we were blown out of the water by [all the new clubs in] Brooklyn, that it was the Fire Dept., that we had no money. It’s all bullshit. Everyone wants to think they’re smart and have an inside scoop."
At HiFi, I run the quotes back by him. He laughs. "Yeah, that’s about it. Brownies hit a ceiling. One bar, one room. If I’d had more space, even for just a side lounge, I could have made enough money to hire someone to handle things I didn’t want to do. People who know me knew how unhappy I was," he says. Now, "they’re like, ‘You are a totally different person.’"
So why the homemade jukebox?
"I can’t go away for the weekend without taking 100 records, ’cause I get bored really quickly. And that’s how I started thinking about how to do music in my bar, and I wanted it to be everything, because I listen to everything."
MP3s are such a gray area that even the bartender I spoke to that night wasn’t sure the thing was legal. I ask Stuto for some details.
"It’s all records I own. There isn’t a single song there that was downloaded from the Internet. I made very sure of that. We’re square with ASCAP, BMI and all that. It’s really unknown sometimes what’s legal, there’s a lot of blurred lines, but there’s nothing different about my jukebox from any other jukebox except for the fact that it has an enormous selection. We pay royalties as any other jukebox would."
Bringing your jukebox into the microprocessor age raises the inevitable question of bugs, crashes and technical support. Does he have tech staff?
"Well, I’m here all the time. But we have a backup system for music if it goes down. The software is brand new, it’s version 1.0, it’s being tested in this bar right now."
Sounds pretty innovative, I note.
"I could sell this for home use," Stuto agrees. "All you have to do is plug it into your output. Which I’ll do, I’m just not ready to do it yet. I don’t wanna market it to bars yet. Then we won’t be the only one."
I ask if there are plans eventually to reopen Brownies. Does he miss it?
"So far I haven’t missed it, but if I find the right space I’m open to do a club again. I was pretty flattered and very surprised that so many people, who were still very bummed out the place was gone, were very sympathetic, just glad I was doing something that would make me happy."
And are any live events planned for HiFi?
"It’ll be quite a while before someone plays an acoustic guitar in the corner," Stuto predicts. "Right now I’m just satisfied with being a cool local bar, a comfortable spot. I do have one idea–instead of having a DJ, we could have a ‘curator’ program eight or nine records and then mingle. It’s changing the idea of a DJ to more of a host for a party. I mean, that doesn’t work for guys who want to scratch and stuff, but it’s a bar, not a club. I’m not trying to change the world or anything."
HiFi is all right–a new East Village rock hangout, like a better-decorated Mona’s or the late, lamented Z-Bar. If it’s not a cool live venue anymore, it’s still a hell of a lot cooler than a wine bar.

First MP3 Jukebox bar in the world
By Pedro Gomes
http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2002/10/p241002mp3jukebox.html
October 24, 2002
On 169 Avenue A, NY, there once was a bar called Brownies, owned by Laura McCarthy and Mike Stuto. It was originally opened in 1989 by Laura, and it was considered a good live music club in the East Village of Manhattan. A report said that it was the host to the New York debut of bands such as Ben Folds Five, Creed, Supergrass, Sugar Ray, Third Eye Blind, Veruca Salt, The Verve Pipe, and many others.In 1998, Stuto, after a disastrous try in the corporate music world, came back and purchased a 50% stake in Brownies, which continued to attract hundreds of customers every night. But Stuto wasn't happy, and the bar closed in August. Philip Henken, who interviewed Stuto at the time, says that he complained about the club schedule: "'All the hype about New York didn’t do a thing for us,' he’d told me back then. 'There was no impact financially whatsoever. We did just as well before, and we could keep going, we could pay our bills. The reason [for closing] is basically just that I don’t want to. There was no reason to keep doing what we were doing in this kind of small space–my heart wasn’t in it anymore. It was just time. It’s really intense and I’m not 22 anymore. I didn’t want to end up hating everyone and everyone hating me just to keep this thing going'".
Now the club is called HiFi, and there's the claim "Best Jukebox on the Planet" on their chalkboard outside, which Henken says that, surprisingly, could be true. Henken continues: "The actual machine isn’t much to look at: a monitor in a lacquered wooden casing, a trackball/mouse and a keypad, plus the ubiquitous dollar-bill slot, kind of a no-frills arcade game. But Brownies co-owner Mike Stuto and a techie friend/hired gun have actually built it from scratch with the guts of a PC and Stuto’s own extensive music collection. What it is is the first fully functional MP3 jukebox, an enormous, alphabetized archive of songs".
Henken talks about the music: "Virtually any song by any band you’re looking to play is here. If you’re dying to hear "Alec Eiffel" by the Pixies, the jukebox is not only packing the CD Surfer Rosa, it’s got all the Pixies’ LPs. Not to mention a wide selection of hiphop, electronica, soul and whatever else. Rather than having to rotate anything out to accommodate new discs, the MP3 format makes it possible to tack new files on without removing the existing songs. It’s an audiophile’s wet dream, like having access to your own collection at home with the added bonus of actually leaving the house and socializing".
As to the legal side of the enterprise, Stuto is very careful because MP3s are such a gray area that even the bartender Henken spoke to once wasn't sure the thing was legal, but Stuto is very clear on the subject: "It’s all records I own. There isn’t a single song there that was downloaded from the Internet. I made very sure of that. We’re square with ASCAP, BMI and all that. It’s really unknown sometimes what’s legal, there’s a lot of blurred lines, but there’s nothing different about my jukebox from any other jukebox except for the fact that it has an enormous selection. We pay royalties as any other jukebox would."