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."

Re:musicmatch?

[Timesprout]

Amarok better see some serious performance improvements before that, it's a memory hog and slow as molasses.

Re:musicmatch?

[djones101]

And from the times I used MusicMatch, it was the exact same.

Yahoo is killing itself

[SCHecklerX]

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

Re:musicmatch?

[morgan_greywolf]

I was thinking the same thing about

http://banshee-project.org/index.php/Main_Page

, which is actually now available for Windows [tirania.org] as well, according to Miguel de Icaza's blog. Very nice, very slick with a iTunes/Rhythmbox-style interface (without the instabilities of Rythmbox), and it's available from the Ubuntu repos.

Re:musicmatch?

[gb0mb]

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]

Re:legal affairs

[morgan_greywolf]

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...

Re:musicmatch?

[SolusSD]

amarok 4 supports album art as well as most ipods. they've also thrown in magnatunes-- which is like itunes music store for inde artists. lots of improvements since 4.0 came out and tons of new plugins.

Re:Stopped long ago

[pclark999]

It is possible to rip CD's created by iTunes. You have to turn off iTunes before running Musicmatch.

MMJB has many faults

[phayes]

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.

Re:Link, Please

[Fulg]

Anyone out there have a link to the last known "good" version?

Have a look at http://oldversion.com/ [oldversion.com]...

Re:Link, Please

[pclark999]

http://www.download.com/Musicmatch-Jukebox/3000-21 67_4-10354571.html?tag=lst-0-1%22 [download.com]

Re:Oh dear.

[Blue Stone]

"...Adobe Reader has gotten pretty fast with the latest version ..."

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.

Comparison of Windows Media Players

[pclark999]

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.

At one time, even Apple used Musicmatch Jukebox!

[bomanbot]

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...

Re:musicmatch?

[dryii]

Unfortunately the latest version only seems to work for XP and Vista 32-bit. Those that installed 64-bit versions of the OS (myself included) are out of luck. Although I have previously installed 2.1.0.175, the latest installation program tells me: Incompatible Operating System Detected

Re:musicmatch?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I can think is that perhaps you're comparing it to XMMS or Winamp 3.x series

Winamp 3 was the dreaded ressource hog.

WinAmp 2.95 is the great one.

Re:Oh dear.

[anethema]

(Adobe Reader is her latest pet-hate, and understandably so)

Actually, adobe reader comes with a lot of cruft you can do without. Just hold shift while starting it and it will start MUCH faster and take less resources.

Alternately there are a few programs out there you can google for that will remove the cruft permanently :)

Media Monkey

[KenAndCorey]

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.

Useful Yahoo bits

[cgenman]

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.

Re:Link, Please

[clickety6]

oldversion.com links back to the musicmatch archives which are now password protected...

Try here:

http://oldapps.com/download.php?oldappsid=musicmat ch82.exe [oldapps.com]

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

[langelgjm]

I believe that "hexadecimal goo" in the comment field is where iTunes stores information about volume normalization. Unfortunately, they fail to give any warning that the program will destroy your comments. Really, that is pretty poor programming. Why couldn't they just stick that information in the iTunes database instead of in the file?

Forget Musicmatch, use Musikcube!

[Lxy]

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!

Re:legal affairs

[moderators_are_w*nke]

That would depend on what country you're in. Ripping is definitely illegal in the UK, unless you have a license that expressly permits it. The law has been reviewed however and should be changed soon as its never enforced.

The Best of MMJB

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Comparison of Windows Media Players

[nerdup]

I'm trapped with iTunes to manage my iPod

Try Rockbox (www.rockbox.org). It's a free, open-source replacement for the ipod's firmware that allows you to do all sorts of things not possible with the original firmware, like drag a music file to your ipod in Windows Explorer and then listen to it. Rockbox has its flaws too, but I dislike Itunes and the original Ipod firmware so much that I changed it to Rockbox within hours of buying my Ipod and haven't regretted it since.

False!

[DanGarion]

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.

The day the music died...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Comparison of Windows Media Players

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

Re:Lifetime Upgrades No Longer Honored

[Weakness]

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!