1/5
Joining the evening
The QR code on the tables opens the jukebox landing page: the iPhone app on one side, the web jukebox on the other. Following the queue and voting need nothing but a browser.
The Jukebox, made in Club Co
Built behind the bar, to hold a full shift: customers put forward their tracks from their phone, the room votes, and the team keeps control without leaving the counter.
iPhone app — now playing and the evening's queue.
Origin
Born behind the bar.
At Club Cochon, a restaurant upstairs and a packed bar downstairs. And the same sentence all evening, at the counter: “can you put this on?”.
That is where the jukebox came from. Not from a workshop: from a shift. It was built with the bar team, on site, between two rushes, and every version went back over the counter the following night.
Anything that did not hold up in the room was taken out. What is left survived the Saturdays.
Designed for the shift, not for the demo.
A full bar leaves no time to explain an app. It has to make sense on its own, and ask nothing of the team.
A web app (streaming and live) & an iPhone app
What the Jukebox does.
In progress An Android app is in development.
2/5
One queue, visible to everyone
Approved tracks form a single queue, shown in the open and ranked by votes. The customer sees what is coming, and so does the bar. The same track no longer gets asked for three times.
3/5
The vote settles it
When two tracks compete for the slot, the room decides. The ranking updates live, with no refereeing behind the bar.
4/5
The bar keeps control
An access code is displayed at the counter: without it, nobody puts a track forward. Every request waits for the bartender's approval before joining the queue, and the code is renewed with one button.
5/5
The music does not stop
Playback runs on the bar's own Spotify account. When the queue empties, the fallback playlists take over, and each track follows the player's real position rather than an assumed duration.
For customers
Three gestures, one code.
01
Scan
The QR code is on the tables. It opens the landing page: install the iPhone app, or join the evening straight from the browser.
02
Get the code
The evening's code is displayed at the counter. It unlocks the right to put a track forward — the bar renews it whenever it wants.
03
Put forward, vote
The track goes to the counter, the bartender approves it, the room votes. The most backed one plays first.
Constraints we kept
What it was built against.
Every technical decision answers something observed in the room, not an assumption.
The connection drops mid-evening
Updates travel over WebSocket, backed by a polling fallback: the screen catches up on its own as soon as the link returns.
Every other phone will not take the app
The web jukebox runs in the browser with nothing to install. Nobody is left out for being on Android or on an old device.
Nobody reads instructions
The QR code opens a five-step guide that plays by itself, from the scan to the evening's code. Nothing for the bar to explain.
The bar has no spare hand
Approve, reject, approve all, play, mark as played: one button each, on the same screen. Or switch on auto-play and the bartender touches nothing at all.
Three people want the same thing
One vote per track per device, three submissions per ten minutes. Nobody takes the evening for themselves.
You have to be able to cut it all off
Jukebox offline: the interface disappears and the server refuses the calls. A tab left open before the switch can no longer send anything.
In service at Club Cochon.
For a bar, a restaurant or an event: the Jukebox goes up with a QR code and is set from the counter.