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."

Oh dear.

[tygerstripes]

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...

Yahoo! sucks

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

Not to mention

[mpickut]

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?

not exactly new news

[eck011219]

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.

Re:upgrade...

[Tuoqui]

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...

Who cares.

[jgijanto]

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!

Songbird

[DomesticatedOnion]

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

I switched to iTunes

[Goldenhawk]

I also purchased the full version of MMJB a few versions ago - I think it was version 8 - because I really liked it, much better than WinAmp or other (at the time) available alternatives. I even recommended it to family, and on my music-related website.

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 programs). Way too many bugs, much slower, many new added nags even in a paid version. And many of the real obvious bugs in version 9 were still present in version 10. Geez, guys, fix the product FIRST, and THEN add features!

But even dealing with version 9 was no longer quite so painless - I now knew that the problems in version 9 would never be fixed. And when we bought an iPod, and had to install iTunes, we never looked back... pretty soon both of our PCs were running iTunes, sharing music with our Roku SoundBridge and syncing our three iPods...

It was a real shame to watch such a decent product decay into such a sorry state.

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

[ansak]

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:musicmatch?

[rootofevil]

sorry, i have itunes running on a windows PC i RDP to for playback from my linux desktop. currently 7123 songs, 30.56 gb, open since tuesday last week. 31,192 mb of ram used. itunes helper is using an additional 200k, and i have the lastfm plugin running too for another 8-ish megs.

not sure how you got to 38mb sans database.

Re:I switched to iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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 programs). Way too many bugs, much slower, many new added nags even in a paid version.

...and that is why I will never pay for anything delivered as "software as a service", "web apps", and/or DRM schemes like Valve's Steam, for anything I plan to rely on.

Too many upgrades these days are downgrades. Fuck the marketing shits. Gimme bits on my hard drive that I can use to re-create whatever version of an app that I think was best, even in the absence of an internet connection.

Does anyone get the impression that

[Locklin]

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).

Re:Yahoo! sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete opposite here in Japan. Not only is their Japanese portal one of the best around, but they also have a broadband ISP. It's not unusual for me to download at 1.2 Mbps on their fibre optic network (which costs me about $35/month).

Yahoo is in trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Yahoo Music **ENGINE**

[BcNexus]

...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.

Re:Yahoo is killing itself

[Wah]

no doubt. The latest "upgrade" installed the yahoo toolbar and if your miss the "please don't fuck me" button, it resets your homepage and takes over all "default" searches.