What purpose did the jukebox serve for people in the 1950s?

Ah, jukeboxes. Jukeboxes played music. They stored lots of those little old, obsolete plastic records known as "45"s that contained one song. Back then, they were coin operated machines. For a nickel or a dime, you could play between 1-3 songs. The nice thing about them was that you could play the songs YOU wanted to hear.

Jukeboxes were installed in most gathering places for high school and college kids--mostly restaurants. They helped attract the kids to a place of business and they also made money for the business.