https://www.jukeboxhistory.info/seeburg/history.html

Seems they implemented an expensive rebuilding into a modern factory in 1965, not a wise move, they would be in financial trouble less than10 years later...

rebuilding into a modern factory in 1965, not a wise move, they would be in financial trouble less than10 years later...

Paraphrasing the late Andy Grove of Intel: Management often fails to recognise and adjust to paradigm shift, even when they pay outside consultants to point it out to them.

-- 'Only the Paranoid Survive' (1988)

In the 1960s the major Jukebox makers scrambled to make their machines automatically play 33 rpm 7" records, Seeburg was the most complex with turntable motor driven by an electronic frequency-generator for different speeds. The juke detected the 33 rpm record based on the size of the spindle hole. All this trouble they went to and yet I've never seen a 33 rpm 7-inch record!

All this trouble they went to and yet I've never seen a 33 rpm 7-inch record!

Yep, companies often have to make big bets backing trends which may not eventuate, and which can have fatal consequences for the company.

Andy Grove is the king of the big bets. Intel used to make memory chips. When it struck him that there was not going to be any profit in that segment, with a lot of pain, effort and acrimony he convinced the company to move into microprocessors. The rest -- as they say -- is history.

Seeburg did manage one quantum paradigm shift: the move from pianos & orchestrions to robotic record players - aka jukeboxes.
Their flagship V200 even had "space-age" (toroidal) computer memory! Surely, they thought, "this is as far as technology can go?"
They didn't know about another visionary at Intel and his "Moore's Law"