This is a major issue, people are loosing hours of work!

Breaking a jukebox that has no disc inside WILL crash Minecraft, and regenerate the chunk it was in. Especially painful if it was next to a chest with valuables or inside a time-consuming structure.

Below are my observations on the issue, i tested these tens of times, the results seem stable.

How to reproduce:
Place Jukebox anywhere. Remove any discs from it. Exit area/relog, or otherwise reload the chunk the Jukebox is in. Without playing a disc, break the Jukebox. Works in both creative and survival.

It doesn't matter if a disc has been played prior to the chunk reload, there just has to be no disc inside when it is reloaded.

Breaking a Jukebox will not crash the game if:
The chunk has not been reloaded after jukebox placed.
A disc has been played after chunk reloaded. Doesn't matter if there is a disc inside or not.

Happened on a multiplayer server, so java versions/systems seem to be not an issue.

Sincerely, QA