Yahoo Downgrades MusicMatch Jukebox

BanjoBob writes "MusicMatch Jukebox has been a bundle of great MP3 and music management applications in one package. Apparently, it is the end of life for this wonderful MP3 player, ripper, catalog, CD player, Internet radio player, purchase outlet, Auto DJ, Super Tagger, and music database. There was nothing not to like about the product. There is nothing to like about the new downgrade, Yahoo! Music Jukebox. MusicMatch users have been getting notices to 'upgrade'; those who have taken the bait are not pleased. The Yahoo! Music Jukebox feedback forum doesn't have much nice to say about the product. Lots of features have gone away and the 'free upgrade' costs about $20."

musicmatch?

Hm.. It really goes to show its been awhile since i used windows. i didn't even realize people were still using musicmatch! amarok does all of the above- and with kde4 coming out soon and a gpl qt license for windows i see amarok making its way to the windows desktop soon enough.

Re:musicmatch?

Agreed. Musicmatch has always been one of those applications that is annoyingly bundled with sound cards and OEM installed widgets...I have used it, but never for very long.

Re:musicmatch?

Really? I have 4,244 files consuming 41 gig of space and I find it to be neither slow nor memory intensive. Right now for me (and it's been running and constantly playing a few days now) it's using 41.8mb total (which includes the shared memory with KDE libraries so its actual footprint is smaller, though I can't tell you exactly how much smaller). It launches in about 2 seconds and all of its features respond instantly.

Compare that with iTunes on the same hardware (I have identical machines side-by-side one running Windows, and the other Ubuntu Feisty, using Synergy [sourceforge.net] to control them). This takes around 10 seconds to launch and with exactly zero songs in its library consumes 38.6 meg.

So in comparing like for like, my 4,000+ song 41gig Amarok is faster with a similar memory footprint to the substantially less featureful iTunes with an empty library.

So I'm not really sure what your basis for comparison is. Maybe you're running AmaroK under Gnome and noticing startup sluggishness due to the KDE libraries needing to be initialized? (which you don't experience if you run AmaroK under KDE since these are initialized when you log in, and also the reported memory stays the same, but actual memory footprint is much lower since in that desktop so many of the libraries which count against AmaroK's reported memory are also shared with a variety of other apps)

The only thing I can think is that perhaps you're comparing it to XMMS or Winamp 3.x series (each eating under 10 meg of RAM and starting virtually instantly). Certainly if you want a music player that does nothing but play music you won't be satisfied with the performance loss to music juke boxes like AmaroK and iTunes. But in that case, may I suggest mpg123 [mpg123.de] as your primary music player since this will be even smaller and faster yet!

Re:musicmatch?

Yahoo has succeeded in ruining a nice piece of software. I also found it interesting how they cut out people with lifetime upgrade subscriptions. I sent an email a while back and they told be what i needed to do to use my key (sorry for the bloated post but if it helps just one person...). Please be advised that Yahoo! Music Jukebox Plus does not use a key, so your Musicmatch Plus key will not work in Yahoo! Music Jukebox Plus. However, if you have a Musicmatch Jukebox Plus key, it will be converted to Yahoo! Music Jukebox Plus at no cost to you when you complete the migration from Musicmatch to Yahoo! Music. You'll be able to log in to Yahoo! Music Jukebox Plus with your Yahoo! ID anywhere, and have access to your Plus features. A tool to automatically convert your Musicmatch subscription to Yahoo! is now available. The Migration Assistant is built into the latest release of the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. Follow the directions below to download the Jukebox, and the Migration Assistant will walk you through this process step-by-step. 1. Download and install the new Yahoo! Music Jukebox here: http://music.yahoo.com/jukebox/mm/ymj/?OEM=29 [yahoo.com] 2. When you start the Jukebox, the Migration Assistant should appear. Follow the instructions on each page (a link to the FAQ is available from most pages). 3. If you have a Musicmatch On Demand subscription, you will be able to migrate it to a Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription. If you have a Musicmatch Jukebox Plus key, you'll migrate that as well. 4. If you have unspent Musicmatch Music Store Gift Certificates or Allowances, you'll be able to convert them to Yahoo! Music Unlimited Gift Certificates 5. If you wish to transfer your music library, you will be offered this option Please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for more information: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/music/jukebox/upd ate/update02.html [yahoo.com]

legal affairs

Probably Yahoo doesn't want to go into legals affairs with the ripping stuff in MusicMatch, turning this app into a kind of iTunes clone.

Re:legal affairs

Who says ripping is illegal? Courts ruled that copying a legally-purchased CD to cassette tape for personal use was legal and I hold that ripping a song from CD to my PC is no different -- like copying for the purposes of using a different player, it's protected under fair use. At least that is until you have to put some green marker on it to defeat the 'copy protection' anyway...

That's a shame

Maybe we should petition Apple to create some kind of easy-to-use jukebox software to replace it since they have a lot of experience with GUI design issues because of MacOS. Still, it's unlikely they'd be willing to port such a piece of software to Windows unless they had some incredible financial incentive to do so... perhaps create some type of device that can be used on both Windows PCs and Macs so it would give them an incentive to write this cool jukebox software to run on Windows too?

Yahoo is killing itself

They ruined their TV listings this year too:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/03/yahoo-gets-tr ashed-by-users/ [techcrunch.com]

Oh dear.

The missus has been using Musicmatch Jukebox for ages now - ever since it came bundled with her MP3/CD walkman. She's always ranting about how every upgrade to every application she uses seems to work worse and more slowly than the last (Adobe Reader is her latest pet-hate, and understandably so).

Fortunately she's had enough and decided to spend some time over the summer installing and learning to use Linux. At least she hasn't been ripping all her CDs into WMA...

Music Match

Seriously they should stop with the term upgrade. I never really used the service here in Canada but the mp3 conversion program worked just too well to trust it to survive an "upgrade" so I didn't bite. This becomes another example of how we are slowly losing, know what I mean?

Yahoo! sucks

Every time I hear about Yahoo! buying up some part of the internet, a little part of me dies inside. Every single thing they acquire gets made worse as a result. Flickr, OneList/eGroups, etc. It's sad, back when Yahoo! was a search engine + portal, they were probably the most useful web site on the internet, but after google eclipsed their search capability, they quickly became useless to me, despite every attempt they've made at staying relevant by offering email and IM services, etc. They're almost as bad as AOL these days.

Useful Yahoo bits

Yahoo shopping: Good comparison site with lots of smaller stores. Use in conjunction with Amazon.
My.Yahoo: As far as bandwidth-sucking front pages go, this one is pretty configurable.
Calendar.yahoo.com: A pretty good online calendaring app with outlook and palm sync, but a huge bonus is the phone-screen support.
Yahoo Games: A solid little group of online games, better because yahoo provides non-english versions for your friends overseas.

Use Winamp... It's better.

I've had problems with MusicMatch bloat for about 2 years now... EVERY TIME I would launch it, it would take so long to go out and "update" streams, etc.. So I finally gave up. I HAD bought the LIFETIME upgrade YEARS ago on it.. so if someone wants to buy my key...

On the other side, WINAMP is awsome... Supports MORE formats than MusicMatch, and has shoutcast, etc.. Again, software worth supporting.

Plus cool skins in Winamp... DUMP Musicmatch and pick up Winamp, you'll be happy when you need to access you music on the windows platform with it.

  -Steve

Can't...parse...

I HAD bought the LIFETIME upgrade YEARS ago on it..

Dude, you type like Shatner talks.

Not to mention

Not to mention that it forces you to see their ads every time you start up. Music Match let you start in your music library, but now you see Yahoo's shilling for their products. Their radio stations put ads after every 3 or 4 songs unless you upgrade to their service too. Can anyone suggest another product for me on xp that has comparable features?

Snicker

Ok, ok, so it's probably because I haven't used it for about 7 years, but I hated that program with a passion. In fact, I still blame that program for every shitty, joint stereo, artifact laden mp3 on the internet.

Please ignore the irrationality of any opinions stated or implied herein.

not exactly new news

I "upgraded" to Yahoo Music Jukebox about five to six months ago when I reinstalled Windows. I just went to what I thought would be MusicMatch and found this Yahoo thing -- I thought it would be roughly the same, but it stinks. The constant badgering to upgrade to the premium service is hard to take. Sadly, iTunes stinks just as much in different ways.

Link, Please

Anyone out there have a link to the last known "good" version? I haven't used it in a while and would like to get the penultimate uncrippled version. For the archives, yeah, that's it, the archives...

Stopped long ago

I stopped upgrading Musicmatch years ago by permanently blocking it from accessing the internet, back when I discovered the 'old' version ripped iTunes CD's and the 'new' didn't; it was a free no-choice-in-the-matter 'upgrade.' At that moment I learned my lesson and got off the upgrade train for all my applications unless and until I understood what was changing and why ahead of time.

"nothing not to like" -- horses$%^

"nothing not to like" ?!?!?! BULS&*@!

musicmatch was a big hairy craptacular piece of garbage.

Who cares.

Music match was a bloated piece of shit 4 years ago - I'd hate to see what new "features" were added in that time period!

MMJB has many faults

There was nothing not to like about the product.

There are many things not to like about MMJB:
Tags that are changed when MMJB is playing a song are not updated in the MP3 files themselves. The Library is updated, but not the files.
Versions before 9.0 had multiple libraries which I used extensively. MMJB 10.0 only has 1 library.
MMJB used to have skins that were well documented & easily changeable. No longer.
MMJB used to be a fairly lightweight audio player. MMJB has multiple background processes that must run on system startup.
These daemon processes are the cause on 90% of MMJB's crashes.
These daemon processes do not die easily causing slow reboots (you usually have to kill the processes off when after 30 seconds of inactivity windows notes that they didn't die when asked "nicely").
These daemon processes prevent external volumes like USB disks & keys from unmounting cleanly, so you have to kill them off by hand.
The one task that the deamon processes are supposed to be useful for from a users point of view (noticing that I renamed/moved files in my MP3 collection using the windows explorer so that MMJB will update the library) does not work reliably. I still have to go in & fix the library by hand.
The Jukebox + features like super tagging that I bought so that I could easily relabel my collection have stopped working because yahoo has turned off the web servers that they rely on.

I have a "lifetime" MMJB+ license without any of the DRM'ed "On Demand" features. I tried the Yahoo client and agree with BanjoBob that for me at least, is worse than MMJB.

Songbird

Yeah! MusicMatch does everything, but everything badly. Try Mozilla based, cross-platform Songbird http://www.songbirdnest.com/ [songbirdnest.com]

Free Upgrade?

I don't get it. How can a "free" upgrade cost money? Is there some loophole in trade law that allows this?

Comparison of Windows Media Players

I recently experienced the Musicmatch downgrade. As a result, I went out and collected Windows-based MP3 players. Here are my conclusions: 1. Musicmatch v10. - didn't work well with large MP3 libraries. The librarian program (MIM.EXE) had a nasty habit of hanging the whole system. Has my personal favorite music browsing interface, a tree with Artist/Album/Songs 2. iTunes v7.2 - only interface to the iTunes store, which is the best MP3 storefront I have found. Has a nasty habit of using 100% of system resources whenever it wants to. I dislike the browser interface. DRM'd to the max. I only use this to manage my iPod and buy music. 3. WinAmp v5.35 - heavily customizable, but I could never figure out how to implement my favored music browsing interface. Too damn many Windows. 4. MediaMonkey v2.5.5 - my new favorite player. Gives me the Music Explorer Tree. Fast. Let's me play music and playlists from my iPod, which even iTunes won't let me do. Reasonable ripping. 5. Windows Media Player v11 - Slick looking user interface. Lousy music browser. Also DRM'd to the max. A Microsoft product - need I say more? 6. Yahoo MusicMatch - Don't know the version because it pissed me off so much I deleted it from my computer. This player has the music player trifecta - DRM'd, slow, lousy interface. Oh yes, and it deluges you with annoying adds. Avoid this player like the plague. Bottomline - if they had just FIXED MusicMatch v10, I think it would have been the best of the lot. Instead, Yahoo replaced it with some crap they scraped off the sidewalk. I'm trapped with iTunes to manage my iPod, although I suspect that if I screw around with MediaMonkey it will do that, too. Use WinAmp if you like blinking lights and pretty pictures. Otherwise, MediaMonkey is the best of the lot.

Re:Comparison of Windows Media Players

Try foobar2000 - should be at the top of a google search for foobar.
It is spartan, but efficient.
It requires a few add-ons like the Columns UI to make pleasant, and it is very customizable but doesn't come with anything fancy out of the box - you can roll your own or borrow from the the thousands of examples people share on the forums.

At one time, even Apple used Musicmatch Jukebox!

Remember when a specially modified version of Musicmatch was the official software for the Windows version of the iPod?

Apple did that because the had no port of iTunes for Windows yet and so they bundled a special version of the Musicmatch software with their Windows iPods. I remember reviews of that time comparing Musicmatch with iTunes and at that point Musicmatch was actually halfway decent (still couldnt hold a candle to iTunes though).

Sadly, it all got downhill after that...

Media Monkey

I was frustrated by MMJB for quite a while, but I couldn't find another product that tagged my files as well. I finally gave up when the application would just crash on me at start-up. I have finally found my nirvana: MediaMonkey [mediamonkey.com]. I only use the free version and it does everything I want, including helping with renaming, creating folders based on ID3 info, searching for duplicates, adding album artwork, conversion from flac and other formats to MP3. I highly recommend it.

Not a new thing for Yahoo

Gamers remember The All-Seeing Eye [wikipedia.org], which for a time was the single best server browser on the market. It started out life as a shareware product and the owner eventually sold it to Yahoo, staying on for a time as the developer. Yahoo's support for the product waned, the developer moved on, and the product hasn't seen an update in years. Yahoo is good at buying out products and letting them die, it seems.

The Death of MusicMatch....

I have used MusicMatch since it's inception, and loved it. My friends all sword by WINAMP and others, but there was something about MusicMatch that was more appealing.

You COULD RIP CD's, download network stream music and save it to your Music Library so it will always be there, Play Radio of your Favorite Music Genre, and loads of other things.

Now, after "upgrading" here's what I get. Constant stream interruption from Yahoo, as they must check my "license". LESS music from the UNLIMITED listen area. Before you could find just about ANYONE, now, IF you find your favorite 60's band (shut up, it's already established that I'm old), you are lucky if there are more then 8 tracks for you to choose. Just this past evening (I'm suffering thru some insomnia) I was listening to the "Classic Rock" channel and no less then 4 times did the Stream stop because Yahoo was trying to check for a license. Apparently they were having trouble checking, because I was told the music stopped because they couldn't find a license for it. The instructions on the screen said I should DOWNGRADE my MusicMatch to 8.1 and use it instead.

I really was hopeful that since Yahoo took things over, they might actually improve the service; although it didn't need MUCH improvement. As it stands right now though, when September 1 comes (my due date for renewal) if things haven't changed, I'll be looking for a new music streaming source, suggestions friends?

musicmatch hasn't been good

since the mid 90s...in about 95 or so, it was a fairly light weight, well put together little audio program/ripper. That's at about version 3 or 4. After that the code bloat set in and it was inundated with unnecessary, system slowing features that ruined it for its original purpose (probably at the behest of big media, I'm sure). Winamp was arguably better all along, but I thought Musicmatch was easier to use until about 96 or so. C'est la vie.

People like musicmatch?

Seven years ago, I remember using musicmatch and having serious issues with it. I guess it was ok, but I can't see someone saying 'whats not to like' about it, much in the same way there was nothing to like about quicktime or realplayer.

Forget Musicmatch, use Musikcube!

Musicmatch 6.0 or so was an awesome player. It tied media into a nice clean interface, gave options to rip CDs, managed your library, etc. Fantastic piece of software.

When Musicmatch 7 rolled around, it was obvious that it was turning into bloatware. The interface was getting bloated and cumbersome, and as I recall it went from annoying (would you like to upgrade?) to flat out nagware (do you want to buy album? Do you want to download music like this for $xx?, etc). Beyond that, I haven't touched the software because once it started sporting the Yahoo! banner I knew it was complete garbage.

So, in my search for a Windows based music player, I happened across musikCube. It's a music player with most of the features of MusicMatch, 100% free, BSD licensed, and even supports ogg vorbis. Here's the Sourceforge [sourceforge.net] page.

Screw Musicmatch, Winamp, Windows Media Player. Give me musikCube!

bloat

Apparently, it is the end of life for this wonderful MP3 player, ripper, catalog, CD player, Internet radio player, purchase outlet, Auto DJ, Super Tagger, and music database. There was nothing not to like about the product

except bloat

Does anyone get the impression that

Proprietary software is going backwards? It seems that about half the upgrades you hear about involve adding restrictions (DRM) or intentionally crippling the software (unless you buy Ultimate).

The Corporate Problem

Too many fingers in the pie, and people are polite instead of telling the truth and offending those who need to grow up and deal with the fact that they're not always right.

Marketing wants to make sure we channel users toward buying the upgrade, legal is concerned about having too powerful of an mp3 ripper, management wants to simplify it so our support costs are less... the product that was once a great idea ends up being a stripped-down, pointless version of itself.

The problem that causes this isn't unique to corporations. It's unique to large groups of humans where we are afraid to tell the truth for social consequences. I've seen it in volunteer groups, the F/OSS movement, even friend groups trying to pick a restaurant.

It is the Human Disease, and the only solution is to get over our personal pretenses and look at the task, not how we represent ourselves in it.

Bad software, but blame Yahoo and not the egineers

I actually met one of the MusicMatch engineers and I tell you, I've never felt so bad for a guy. They were so proud of their product when it was MusicMatch. Then Yahoo bought them out and overnight they were working at breakneck speed converting it to Yahoo's vision of the Yahoo Music Engine (as it was called then) to launch their Yahoo Music Unlimited service on. I guess somewhere in the rush a bad memory leak was introduced (along with a few smaller problems). I don't think they ever got around to fixing the leak because it was too deep rooted in the code. Instead, they jury rigged it to where it wouldn't kill Windows, just make the software itself slow as all get out. Basically, everytime they went to actually fix the software, Yahoo kept pushing more of their external changes. Now it's to the point where I'll be surprised if they ever fix it unless they just scrap what they have and start over.

I would like to say, however, as much as the software sucks the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service for $7 a month is the best $7 I spend each month. Less than the price of a cd and I'm actually surprised at some of the obscure stuff I find on it. If your tastes are more mainstream, you'll find everything you want minus Zepplin and a few other hard to contract acts.

why not use wmp11?

IMHO Windows Media Player 11 is much better than iTunes at this point. It's responsive, good looking, downloads cover art from the web, rips and burns audio CDs with ease, and keeps good tabs on the additions/removals from my media library. I'll never be accused of being a Microsoft fan but this is one of their upgrades that went well. Really the only music organizer that I like as much is Amarok which isn't an option for my Vista machine.

The Best of MMJB

What made MMJB great and continues to make it so is the ability to port in any music source in addition to the supper tagging etc. Yeas I have had issue with the MMJB on occassion but chalk that up to a slow machine and connection. It runs rock solid on my newer box.

      In "Preferences" there is an option to choose your recording source which is gone in the Yahoo Juke-

-the cd/dvd drive
-sound card aux line input
-system mixer

      This feature made it easy to port in the following-
-vinyl lps via the Aux In and sent from your audio system receiver etc.
-analog tape whether cassette or reel also via the Aux line in mixer

        Or any audio device that outputs the industry standard "Line Level"

        Basicallly if you have your pc near your home stereo, you would just patch the "tape outputs R & L" to your sound card Aux input and then any source that you listen to via your home stereo receiver (vinyl, cassette, reel) is easily port into MMJB allowing you to digitize and preserve

      This has enabled me to convert all of my live band recordings on reel and cassette to digital and manage them with MMJB in addition to select vinyl cuts or even micro cassette demos.

      An added bonus was using DFX to enhance the original recordings which worked well.

    With the Yahoo juke, there is no porting in so I will now have to buy a desktop audio editing suite.

Nail me to the cross people

I know you fuckers are going crusify me for this but why not just use windows media player if your going to use shit? I'm one of the dumb fucks that paid for the life time upgrade on musicmatch and I just didn't get screwed, I got fucked up the ass with a pole. You see, I paid 70 fucking bucks for 10.0, damn my ass hurts. Okay, enough rambling, but windows media player is pig and is put out by the antichrist all right but once you get over that, its not really half bad. I mean once you kick that urge shit to the curb it does play mp3 rather nice, it burns cd's from mp3, and it even loads my ancent nomad with no problems. It's not really that bad a program.

Same thing with Audible software...

I have been an Audible customer for just about as long as the service has been available. I have never had an "approved" player because the list of supported players was horrible at first and then because I just got used to my player and like the way it operates. I have always just downloaded the book in the audible manager software and then converted it to standard MP3 with Goldwave. Fast forward several years. A few months ago I had some issues getting a book to download properly. It would download but always start about 40 minutes into the book. I called customer support and was asked to "upgrade" to the newest Audible download manager. You guessed it...the new software would no longer allow Goldwave to convert the files. I searhed the web for the old software and re-installed it. I also sent a note to Audible letting them know that, should the old sofware quit working, I would no longer be a customer. Many of these corporate software upgrades appear to be limiting our use of the products we have purchased from those same corporations. Total crap! Sexton

Yahoo is in trouble

Yahoo is in deep shit. Instead of clawing their way out with vision, ingenuity and leadership they are using every advantage they have to pry money from me. Google is giving things away and buying comapnies, adding still tremendous value Yahoo is charging for everything now, and isn't adding any more value whatsoever They are obviously in termoil, I predict a mass exodous of talent from Yahoo if it hasn't happened already Why doesn't Google just buy Yahoo?

False!

I'm calling B.S. that is costs $20 for the upgrade. I owned MusicMatch since early 2000 something. I ended up costing me nothing to get the upgrade to Yahoo Music. The only problem I have with it right now is that it's sort of a resource hog.

Yahoo Music **ENGINE**

...used to be my favorite store front end. Reasonably fast, nice user interface. Good sorting of my music and Yahoo's. Then it got fuxored and became jukebox or some shit and that's when it began pestering me to buy crap when I WAS ALREADY PAYING for Y! Music Unlimited. The endless stream of mandatory updates that made it slower, less functional, more naggy and more crash prone really turned me off. Way to take Y! Music Unlimited which I chose over Napster and Rhapsody as my MS Windows music store for the reasons mentioned above and fuck it all up, Yahoo.

The day the music died...

Thanks for noticing. As a former MM employee I can only thank Yahoo! for doing nothing for MM since the acquisition. I cannot recommend that anybody reading this allow Yahoo! to purchase your company. You may walk away rich, but the company you kept will become bankrupt.

MMJB was a product of devotion and effort among it's employees. The product wasn't perfect, but that wasn't because everyone didn't want it to be, more because we needed to get it out the door to satisfy some requirement or another. At the time of the purchase, everyone was looking forward to the resources that Yahoo! could bring to the table. What we discovered afterwards was mismanagement, corruption, and incompetence among those running the show. The news that they are discontinuing MMJB is no real surprise to me, as everyone realizes that YMJ is in no condition to be considered an upgrade path, and the afore mentioned incompetence would lead to a decision like this.

This may be the final nail in the coffin, but trust me folks, this was a long time coming. I would encourage a user revolt, but I don't think anyone would care enough to notice.

Nothing not to like?

How about how intrusive it was and put garbage all over the place and tried to take over from other apps? How about the horrible rip quality (no error detection/correction like EAC) and the terribly outdated and flawed MP3 conversion algorithms and no Ogg support, at least in the version I tried.

It's always been a POS

MusicMatch Jukebox has been a bloated, annoying piece of nagware since it was created. I don't see how this is news.

Also, yahoo has been a big fan of forcing these "upgrades" on people since Yahoo messenger was in about version 4.5.

After that it got shittier and shittier but they keep forcing people to "upgrade" and will tell them all sorts of lies to get them to allow it.

Older versions used to allow you to choose not to upgrade. Not so with anything about 6.0 onward. Makes me want to go visit OldVersion [oldversion.com] again.

Are you serious?

You must have been the guy who wrote it, because MusicMatch is AWFUL.

I got my iPod before iTunes was available on the PC, and this is what I had to use instead. It was horribly clunky and slow. iTunes for all it's problems is 100 times better.

I had this on myDell when it was new

I have carefully refused all attempts to get me to "upgrade". Nevertheless, the thing that ticks me off is the setting in the program's preferences that sets the frequency the program waits before phoning home to check for updates and new versions. I have had that set to NEVER for over 2 years but it didn't stop the notices that Yahoo was taking over MM Jukebox.

Some freaking ethics. You tell it not to phone home and it does it anyway. I guess it has been doing so all along. That setting is more like a 'severity' level for displaying their spammy drek.

And don't kid yourself, there's plenty not to like about MM Jukebox, although most of my complaints center on the user interface and the way they scatter secret "upgrade now" menu items and buttons all over the place.

A pox on Yahoo's house. Now that MM Jukebox has been discontinues I think I'll reverse-engineer a key for it. No use being bothered to register a program that can no longer be registered.

MMJ MP3 player support

My old buddies at Philips tech support must be thrilled. Whilst their newer players all use MTP to copy tracks via Windows Media Player, the older models (apart from one or two drag 'n' droppers) are, IIRC, dependent on MusicMatch + drivers.

Great place to work, but I'm hella glad I won't have to deal with this =)

I take issue here

"There was nothing not to like about the product."
Gotta disagree with you there. I used it way back when, and it wasn't that great for anything except ripping MP3s from CDs, and in later versions that functionality was severely gimped.

Use Winamp, or foobar2000 if you're a power user.

All Seeing Eye Anyone?

This is a similar tale as what became of ASE. You'd think someone at Yahoo might start acting like they give a shit about the customers of the companies they buy. But apparently, they just slate these acquisitions for outright destruction, and for what? Maybe if we destroy enough good apps, the stock price will finally go up again? Has Master Control Program taken control over there?

Musicmatch replacement with alarm

Does anyone know of a good media player that has an alarm feature? I still use Musicmatch because I can wake up to whatever I want to hear in the morning (and loudly). Thanks

Re:upgrade...

They shouldnt have to. There should always be a non-iTunes option otherwise they'll get like any monopoly, big, fat and complacent.

Anyways should we call 2007 'The Year of the Downgrade'. First Vista, now this... I hope this isnt the trend in the future...

Why I am no iTunes fan (at least not on Windows)

iTunes is not a good enough option. Here are reasons I dislike running iTunes on Windows and will not go back to it there:

• It installs a "helper" program as a service. I've got enough services running on my computer. Given how little control I have over my Windows box by default, I'd just as well not have another service running.
• I don't like the idea of buying individual songs. I'd rather let the artist speak his/her/their whole album to me at once. It seems a little obscene, a little violating to the artistic process to cherry-pick. And if I'd done so in the past, I would have missed some real gems. Yes, I also loathe top-40 radio.
• Garbage in my MP3s. Open the Info view of some MP3 file you've ripped from your own collection of CDs, tapes and (yes!) vinyl (like the Alt-3 view in WinAmp 2.8). Add a comment. Now manage that MP3 file in iTunes. Open the Info view again. What's all that hexadecimal goo in the Comment field!? Bad program. Bad, bad program. Leave user data as you found it!

Write me off as a curmudgeon but when I run an MP3 player, I expect something that launches, plays MP3s (and leaves their content alone) and quits nicely when it leaves. iTunes doth not answer the bell, methinks, and its music purchase model doesn't do it for me either.

cheers...ank, curmudgeon, I!

Re:Why I am no iTunes fan (at least not on Windows

Garbage in your MP3s? Let's consider that iTunes adds functionality to your MP3s by letting you tack on much more information than WinAMP, including album artwork, playback position, expanded tags for TV show organization, different fields for display info and sort info, etc. WinAMP can't TOUCH the massive organizational capabilities of iTunes, which, when combined with Smart Playlists allows you to autogenerate complex playlists based on criteria in your tags, which, if you are as much of a music geek as you think you are, your tags are incredibly intricate and detailed, allowing for more flexibility in autogeneration.

So iTunes can sort your collection by the maiden name of the mother of the 3rd girlfriend of the drummer of the band?

Great!

... except sticking some human-unreadable crap in the comment tag is a big no-no, not just from aestethic point of view, but also from the most basic standpoint of sane software design. That is so because inserting hexadecimal goo into comments fields, and thus essentially destroying their contents and usefulness for human readers, is not an acceptable method of storing data, but a desperate kludge by someone who had no idea where to put the extraneous pile of bits. If an application must store the names of pet cats of the songs writer's landlords, it should do so either in a dedicated MP3 ID tag, or, better yet (since sanity will soon leave us when 152454th tag type is introduced to store the "favourite flower of the accountant of the producer of the album"), in a separate database linked to your files via MD5 checksums or what not as this does not damage/corrupt the MP3 files themselves from the point of use in other software/players or human readability.

Re:Lifetime Upgrades No Longer Honored

I was really pissed about the whole lifetime upgrade thing. This was a scam and Yahoo! really has pissed me off. There goes their 'for the normal guy' mentality. Yahoo! go eat me. Signed 11 MMJB Lifetime Members... bah humbug!