Music streaming through your tv with Electric Jukebox

We love music in our house. We might not agree all the time on what to play, but all of us enjoy listening to it. The OH and N love to rock (loudly and in the dark) while watching bands like Foo Fighters and ACDC. I prefer more eclectic tastes, listening to music in the car, or on the ipod or radio in the kitchen while cooking. And of course I dance a lot and hear a lot of new music that way.

On holiday N discovered the love of a juke box, and is making do with recorded concerts and rock dvds at the moment. Mostly with his dad’s rock influence. So when Electric Jukebox contacted me for a review, I thought it would be a great opportunity to mix up our family’s musical tastes.

Electric Jukebox was launched, being backed by curators Robbie Williams, Alesha Dixon, Stephen Fry and Sheryl Crow. There’s over 29 million songs ad-free, available for streaming direct to your tv and only needing a wifi connection.

The box that Electric Jukebox comes in is really dinky and includes a quick start guide which worked a dream with our tv. We just plugged the tv stick into the hdmi port on the tv and plugged it in with the supplied cable. Then used the controller to connect the tv to the wifi, and we were set up and ready to find music.

We have really slow internet connections (2-3mbps) and we did get some places where the ‘slow wifi’ icon popped up on screen. But we were still able to use the electric jukebox. It was likely just a bit slower at searching for music than it may have been if you’ve a faster connection.

As well as the stick and controller, the box also includes cables, power adapter for charging the controller (easily done through a computer or phone charger plug and a longer guide for set up and trouble shooting. The main thing is that for a year after set up, you have access to premium Music Pass. After that, either it costs £52 a year to continue to subscribe, compared to other subscription services which are around £9.99 monthly.

There’s various different options – you can search by genre or by artist, and there’s either a keyboard option to search or you can try saying a song or artist into the controller microphone. It didn’t like my speaking very much, but it was easy enough to use the keyboard anyway. So easy, even my fairly wild 5 year old could hit the correct keys.

Some of my searches didn’t bring anything up, so I decided to stick with searching by genre. This worked out best because I could see the type of songs included. Once you’ve chosen a genre – it was then broken down further – so pop goes down into eras or boy bands or girl singers etc, until a playlist comes up. You can play the whole list, find out more information on what’s coming next, or choose single songs from the list.

Once N had decided to get involved of course we had to find rock tracks. He wanted Guns n Roses, and searching for them brought up a couple of albums to either play or choose tracks from. N was in his element. I didn’t tell him I could add his favourites to a playlist. It’s really easy to do so, just needing to press the add to play list button, naming it and then coming back to it another time.

It’s going to be great to add rocking tracks, chill out, pop party, kids tunes – I can see me getting playlist happy!

If you fancy trying it out, Electric Jukebox is available from Selfridges, Argos, Amazon* and direct at Electric Jukebox for a UK RRP of £169. There’s even a choice of colours.

Do you stream music? Could you see this working well in your home?

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Disclosure: I was sent an Electric Jukebox for the purpose of review.  *affiliate links