A long wooden surface, manned by one or more bartenders? Check.

What about a jukebox?

Well, believe it or not, with the emergence of iTunes, iPods and satellite radio in the last six or seven years, those friendly, flourescent, takers-of-quarters have become increasingly rare.

"Doesn't every bar have a jukebox?" said Terry Ryals, owner and manager of CJ Enterprises, the amusement services company next to Seong's Sushi on Glacier Avenue.

Not anymore.

In fact, driving around on Monday night, Hooligan's crack team of jukebox scouts could locate only two machines in the entire Mendenhall Valley: one in the under-renovation Mi Casa Lounge inside the Travelodge, and a newfangled TouchTunes Digital Jukebox at the Sandbar.

Suzy Lafferty / Juneau Empire   the modern era: The TouchTunes digital jukebox on the wall at the Lucky Lady is one of three such machines in Juneau. Bar owners say that the machines are becoming the norm for soundtracks in local watering holes.

The Arctic is one of those rare bastions of musical autonomy. The bar used to have a 45 machine when bartender Paul Neal started there in 1976. Thirty-one years later, it's Rockola CD jukebox is probably the most respected bar jukebox in town.

The musical selection is constantly updated by bartenders and patrons.

"People will come in here, because they heard a certain song out on the street," Neal said.

"It's just basically for everybody's enjoyment," he said. "If John comes in and says, 'Hey Paul, I've got a CD. Can we put it in?' I'll take a look at it and put it on. It's as easy as that."

Such egalitarianism is rare. In our modern era, the soundtrack isn't determined by the patron. It's up to the machine on the shelf behind the bar.

"It's bartender's choice," said Brian Evans, a patron taking break outside Marlintini's Lounge on Monday evening. "And that's alright, if you like the bartender's choice."

The old-school jukeboxes, with the stacks of 45s, have long since vanished from the bar scene. And now, even the compact disc models are starting to disappear.

The Sandbar, the Lucky Lady and the Viking Lounge all carry TouchTunes Digital Jukeboxes. It's still $1 for three credits. If your song is one of the easily accessible MP3s in the machine's immediate digitized database. The models will download other songs via satellite for a charge of two credits.

The Sandbar leases its machine through Juneau fisherman Sam Smith, who runs a number of bar machines in town. On Monday night, the digital box's top 10 ranged from Big & Rich's "Save a Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" at No. 1, to Everlast's "What It's Like" at No. 5, and Faron Young's "Hello Walls," at No. 9.

"We kind of laugh," said Gail Niemi, Sandbar co-owner. "Most of our crowd is under 30 or over 50, so that does make it interesting. (The top 10) changes, depending on who's been doing what that week."

The Lucky Lady has leased a TouchTunes since Jan. 2006. Its old CD machine had a sterling reputation in town, but began to show its age after spending 11 years in the bar. Its guts were breaking down and often needed attention.

"It was just time to look for something new," said Judy McDonald, co-owner of the bar. "We saw this one, and it was just a lot simpler than buying all the CDs and doing it ourselves.

"People come here just to play it and listen to that music," she said. "It just goes and goes and goes. And right now, it's not going. But since I walked in here 35 minutes ago, it hasn't ever stopped. In fact, somebody's looking at it right now."

TouchTunes has sold more than 26,000 digital jukeboxes, which have played more than one billion songs since 1998, according to the company.

"Digital is the way the world is going," Niemi said. "My daughter used to buy two or three CDs a week, and now she has an iPod, and I don't believe she's bought a CD in a year. So the music industry is facing major changes."

The Sandbar used to have an older CD jukebox, leased through CJ Enterprises. CJ no longer operates a jukebox in town. It still orders machines for customers, but the last time anyone asked for one was about three years ago, Ryals said.

The Sandbar's old machine was "never very successful," Niemi said, because it proved to be "cost prohibitive."

"If a No. 1 song came up, you had to go out and spend $10 or $15 to buy the CD and put the song on there," Niemi said. "Then six months later, nobody wanted to listen to it. We had a hard time keeping the currently popular songs on there."

In the past, the Sandbar paid a $400 yearly fee to ASCAP, a nonprofit organization that guards songwriters by charging fees for copyrighted music. The fee was for the band's live entertainment on the weekend and for all the songs played on the jukebox.

It was a flat fee, no matter how often the box was used.

"They really had no clue what was actually played on your jukebox," Niemi said.

The TouchTunes jukebox sends a record of what's played to its parent company, the Illinois-based TouchTunes Music Corp. TouchTunes then charges each bar a copyright fee based on a percentage of how many songs each machine plays.

"Now, you're no longer paying for music that you're not listening to," Niemi said.

• Korry Keeker can be reached at 523-2268 or korry.keeker@juneauempire.com