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Yahoo Downgrades MusicMatch Jukebox
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jul 09, 2007 07:11 AM
from the nice-while-it-lasted dept.
from the nice-while-it-lasted dept.
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."
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That's a shame (Score:3, Funny)
Yahoo is killing itself (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/03/yahoo-gets-t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh dear. (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re: (Score:2)
Musicmatch Jukebox I never cared for, after the last time I tried it 4 years ago. I imagine it's worse than even iTunes now...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You must be one of the lucky ones. I uninstalled it as unusable after enless lock-ups due to the updater portion of the program.
Re: (Score:3)
Note that Foxit won't work with some of the latest pdf security devices, such as fileopen, (http://www.fileopen.com/).
Also worth a mention is Cute PDF writer, http://tinyurl.com/2scjk [tinyurl.com], (the only free one I found without annoying watermarks). Creates a decent pdf MUCH faster and simpler than Acrobat. Again, not up to latest security features.
To OCR recognise pdfs, try Abbey reader - very expensive but worth it.
Finally, the best (nearly) FOSS alternative to pdf is Déjà Vu, (htt
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Alternately there are a few programs out there you can google for that will remove the cruft permanently
Yahoo! sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Useful Yahoo bits (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Use Winamp... It's better. (Score:3, Insightful)
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
These days, Winamp also suffers from bloat (Score:2)
Later versions suck by comparison.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Using the filesystem as a music browser sucks because (with some exceptions -- BeOS being the only one I'm aware of), the filesystem isn't aware of most of the metadata stored inside the media files themselves. It's fine if you only listen to music by browsing the Artist/Album tree, but if you want to do something more complex -- listen randomly to all songs from a particular genre, or perform some sort of Boolea
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Of course if you are on l
I switched to iTunes (Score:3, Interesting)
Version 9 had some nice new features, together with some added annoyances and nags. I was still sort of happy.
But then version 10 came out... and within weeks I'd uninstalled it and gone back to version 9 (I'm glad I keep copies of my downloaded install progr
Can't...parse... (Score:5, Funny)
I HAD bought the LIFETIME upgrade YEARS ago on it..
Dude, you type like Shatner talks.
Parent
Not to mention (Score:4, Interesting)
Snicker (Score:2)
Please ignore the irrationality of any opinions stated or implied herein.
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not exactly new news (Score:3, Interesting)
Link, Please (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Try here:
http://oldapps.com/download.php?oldappsid=musicma
Stopped long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
"nothing not to like" -- horses$%^ (Score:3, Insightful)
musicmatch was a big hairy craptacular piece of garbage.
Who cares. (Score:3, Interesting)
MMJB has many faults (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Maybe not an upgrade but a new app (Score:3, Insightful)
Free Upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Comparison of Windows Media Players (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Comparison of Windows Media Players (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
The Death of MusicMatch.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Forget Musicmatch, use Musikcube! (Score:3, Informative)
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!
The Corporate Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The day the music died... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
I had this on myDell when it was new (Score:3)
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.
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Re:musicmatch? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:musicmatch? (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
not sure how you got to 38mb sans database.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:musicmatch? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Re:legal affairs (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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) (Score:4, Interesting)
- 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!
Parent
Re:Why I am no iTunes fan (at least not on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent