National Jukebox Day Date in the current year: November 27, 2024

A jukebox is a partially automated musical device, usually coin- or token-operated, that can play a song of your selection on demand from its collection of vinyl records or compact discs. The history of jukeboxes dates back to the late 19th century; their early forerunners were coin-operated player pianos, music boxes, and phonographs.

One of the first jukeboxes was Justus P. Seeburg’s “Audiophone”, released in 1928. It was a combination of a loudspeaker with a coin-operated record player that had eight turntables and thus allowed patrons to select from eight different records.

The word “jukebox” originated in the United States in the 1940s. It was probably derived from the vernacular term “juke joint” referring to an informal establishment featuring drinking, gambling, music, and dancing. The “golden era” of jukeboxes lasted from the 1940s to the mid-1960s, peaking in the 1950s.

During their peak, jukeboxes received the newest recordings first and were an important market-testing device and source of income for record publishers. Jukeboxes tallied the number of plays for each song, allowing to collect play data and measure song popularity. Billboard introduced a chart for jukebox records in 1944 and published it until 1959. Since the 1960s, however, the popularity of jukeboxes has waned.

National Jukebox Day was launched in 2016 by TouchTunes, a manufacturer of digital pay-for-play jukeboxes whose jukebox network includes 65,000 restaurants and bars across the United States. It is celebrated on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because this is one of the busiest bar nights of the year: a lot of people come to their home towns to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families and reconnect with friends over drinks the day before.

The inaugural National Jukebox Day was celebrated on November 23, 2017. It coincided with the anniversary of the day when William S. Arnold and Louis Glass installed a coin-operated phonograph in the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco, which is often regarded as a forerunner to the jukebox.

The best way to celebrate National Jukebox Day is to meet with your friends and family at a local bar, diner, restaurant or another establishment that has a jukebox and reminisce about the good old times while listening to amazing music.

We won’t suggest that you purchase a jukebox to celebrate the holiday because jukeboxes, both vintage and digital ones, tend to be quite expensive. However, you can download one of the many jukebox apps that replicate the experience of a jukebox or simply listen to your favorite tracks from the jukebox era and share your playlist with friends.

Other ways to celebrate National Jukebox Day include purchasing jukebox-related merchandise, watching a movie that features jukeboxes, and spreading the word about the holiday on social media using the hashtags #NationalJukeboxDay and #JukeboxDay.