






Yahoo Downgrades MusicMatch Jukebox 217
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."
That's a shame (Score:3, Funny)
Yahoo is killing itself (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/03/yahoo-gets-t
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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...
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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...
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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.
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Try Foxit reader (Score:2)
Loads fast, works really well, and basic version is free.
But this is getting offtopic...
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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
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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.
Delicious bookmarks too (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del.icio.us [wikipedia.org]
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.
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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.
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Not to mention (Score:4, Interesting)
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Snicker (Score:2)
Please ignore the irrationality of any opinions stated or implied herein.
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For those interested, see the wiki [wikipedia.org], or this page. [freeuk.com] "Joint Stereo" can refer to a number of techniques, some of which work better than others, and some implimentations are better than others. I had incorrectly assumed it to be a compression feature not worth the bit savings ~ and it's MusicMatch's fault
not exactly new news (Score:3, Interesting)
Link, Please (Score:2)
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Try here:
http://oldapps.com/download.php?oldappsid=musicma
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Stopped long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
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"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)
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Don't forget (Score:2)
Songbird (Score:2, Interesting)
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Free Upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Comparison of Windows Media Players (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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.
At one time, even Apple used Musicmatch Jukebox! (Score:2, Informative)
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...
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And it was TERRIBLE!! (Score:2)
When iTunes for Windows came out I finally got why people loved the iPod. Just being able to add 1 song at a time was a miracle...
Media Monkey (Score:2, Informative)
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I have issues with most software players because they take Artist as some God-given way to sort, but between compilations, soundtracks/cast recordings, and one-off downloads, my artist list is so long it's practically unusable. Me
Not a new thing for Yahoo (Score:2)
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?
musicmatch hasn't been good (Score:2)
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!
Does anyone get the impression that (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
why not use wmp11? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nail me to the cross people (Score:2, Flamebait)
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 s
False! (Score:2, Informative)
Yahoo Music **ENGINE** (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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!
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not sure how you got to 38mb sans database.
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38,432k memory used.
iTunes version 7.2.0.34. After clicking the About dialog to get the exact version, memory jumped to 39,508k. Database is still empty.
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I agree that WinAmp 2.x series was and is classic. However, I actually use 2.91 because 2.95 appears to have some bugs, specifically with the windowshade mode.
I tried 3.x and 5.x but both are just too bloated an application when all I want to do is play MP3s. I don't understand why every software company feels the need to make their applications get more and more bloated with unwanted/unneeded features.
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Re:musicmatch? (Score:4, Informative)
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If you most load the steamy loaf under X64, I had some luck loading it in compatablity mode. You might give that a try.
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http://linux.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/official-kd
Re:legal affairs (Score:4, Informative)
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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)
cheers...ank, curmudgeon, I!
Re:Why I am no iTunes fan (at least not on Windows (Score:2)
It installs a "helper" program as a service
That just exists for notifications of iPod plug and unplug events. If you don't have an iPod, you can disable it.
I don't like the idea of buying individual songs
Just because you run iTunes, doesn't mean that you have to buy music from the iTunes store. I also prefer to buy albums, and I've bought a few from the iTunes store where, by the way, they are cheaper per-track than if you buy individual songs.
Garbage in my MP3s
I've not come across this, since all of my music is in AAC format (and has been since before iTunes supported it, when I used WinAMP with FAAD to play
Re:Why I am no iTunes fan (at least not on Windows (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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Have you ever considered the possibility that it's WinAmp, not iTunes, that is b0rking the metadata?
Personally, I don't know the answer, but just assuming that it's iTunes seems an awful lot like jumping to conclusions to me.
Before you rant and rave about how iTunes is destroying your metadata, why don't you try taking a look at the same tagged MP3 in a few other players? You should also put the same tags on in those other players, then open it in iTunes, and in
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iTunes does add garbage to the tag. One more reason I don't use it. The biggest reason was more to do with it bing slow and a memory hog on my computer. Even after disabling the "helper" service (I know all it does is listen for iPods, but why leave it running if I don't use an iPod?)
Why bother harassing Apple to fix it? I ju