solution for playing music in a coffee house

[elicbelic]

Hi,
I own a small coffee house, until now I played music from regular cd's in my stereo.
I'm looking for a way to play music without having to change cd's so often. I thought about 3 different solutions:
a. Connecting ipod to the stereo
b. Connecting CD/DVD player that reads mp3 cd's to the stereo.
c. Playing mp3 through PC

what is your opinion?

[Les Adams]

I would go down the PC route. Given that you don't need a powerful or even a very modern PC to play mp3's, just a reasonably sized hard drive, you could use a program like I-Tunes or Windows Media Player to convert your CD's to mp3 and create tracklists.

A second hand PC with a basic audio card can be picked up very cheaply on Ebay and off you go. This method is widely used in bars already and eliminates the damage caused by sticky fingers on CD's or having them laying abound all over the place! It also gives you ultimate control over the music so you avoid staff members playing their favorite thrash metal CD's when customers are trying to relax over a cup of tea and a sticky bun! A Hard drive is also a fairly well sealed device that is not going to be affected as badly by steam or heat as a CD player might.

Also, a pc (especially an old one) is less likely to go missing than an ipod or DVD player!

The only consideration is that a hard drive, like any mechanical device, will eventually fail, so keeping a backup drive is always a good plan to avoid losing all your music when it does.

[Ajani]

I'll 2nd the PC suggestion... it allows you to create your own playlist and thus avoid switching CDs and as mentioned by Adams, it's far less likely to be stolen than CD's, a CD player, dvd player or an ipod....