Sound Systems for Business

[Javier Odom]

In one of our businesses (not jewelry) we use Sonos speakers throughout the area to play various types of music.  In our jewelry business I have been experimenting with different concepts.

We used to have a 100 disc CD player, fully loaded, and that would just play random tracks.  Then we went to a smaller CD player that did the same.  After that, we went off the edge.  I took a Raspberry Pi and attached a digital screen to it along with some buttons, and turned it into a Pandora Client.  The moment it powered on, it would connect to a paid Pandora account and play a specific station.  If we wanted to skip, pause, play, stop, and even thumb up or down songs, we could use the button interface to do so, as the screen scrolled the name of the track and artist, as well as timing information for each track.  It worked like a champ!  Then one day it did not work.  Troubleshooting was it's weak spot.  So, we migrated to our next iteration, an old PC with Ubuntu linux installed and Pithos pandora client software.  That worked really well, although, I think I wore the PC out because I had it turning off and on every day on a particular schedule.  I had to replace the PC, but they were so cheap and the config was easy to practically reimage that I kept the same config going, except I stepped away from Ubuntu and went to Debian linux.  (Ubuntu was changing their repository rules or what have you around that time, and I was done with it.)

This past week, my debian linux box entered the ether and never came back.  As a temporary solution I used a tablet to handle music.  So I took a spare computer I had laying around, put debian on it, pithos, and some other utilities, and instead of dropping the power on the box every day I am just using crontabs to close pithos but leave the user logged in (I played with closing the X session but opted against that route).  Then when we open, the crontabs executes pithos again, and the cycle starts over.  If the power drops on this box when it reboots it automatically gets the music going again.  It is on an isolated VLAN for security purposes which mitigates exposure (all of my music systems are on dedicated networks for the same reasons).

We shall see how this new setup does.  I am hopeful.

The cost of my system is very low.  Pandora by the year, ceiling speakers, copper wire to a small amplifier, a 3.5mm jack/wire from the amplifier to the debian box, the debian box, a power strip, and a small power outlet timer, electricity (minimal), internet service (have it anyway), oh, and a network cable for wild wild web access.  I do not need a monitor, keyboard or mouse on that box, but I am using spares just because.

Comparing our Sonos system with this Debian linux and Pithos Pandora client system, the Sonos system requires more attention and money throughout the year while the Debian/Pithos system can be completely forgotten about as it just handles the full automation of piping music into the business.  No human interaction is really required.  I maintain the systems with updates, but that takes ... less than five minutes a month probably, and I *could* automate this even.

Maybe there are other autonomous music systems out there, but my guess is they cost more money than my setup.  If you are technically able to do so, I would highly recommend you look at setting up a linux music solution in your business that can automate everything and allow you to do other things.

I would be curious to know what music solutions you use.