Y!Music Musicmatch Jukebox, a remake of the original Musicmatch Jukebox made by Yahoo! Musicmatch, Inc, is an audio player that manages a digital audio library. It contains an online music store, Internet radio, CD playback and ripping software, and other features commonly found in jukebox software.
Musicmatch
Musicmatch is the former company (founded in 1997) that developed the Musicmatch Jukebox software. Jukebox was added to the software name when the dynamic playlist feature-set was added to the software. Subsequent products included Musicmatch Radio, Musicmatch Music Store, and Musicmatch On Demand. The original Musicmatch name and brand were developed by Creative Multimedia and were part of a series of media-oriented online resources, including Moviematch.
On September 14, 2004 Yahoo! announced that it was going to acquire Musicmatch. The acquisition was completed on October 19, 2004 for a reported price of US $160 million.
Yahoo!
As of Musicmatch 10.1, Yahoo! branding was incorporated. The former logo has been replaced by a pure Yahoo! purple logo, and the Y! Music logo replaces the location of the Musicmatch logo elsewhere in the product. The Music Store now uses Yahoo! IDs for authentication. Version 10.1 of the Jukebox is no longer available on the Musicmatch website, however, older versions can be downloaded from: Old Musicmatch Versions In its place, the website now offers the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. In mid 2007 Yahoo! began migrating Musicmatch users to the Yahoo! Music Jukebox with plans to discontinue the Musicmatch service on August 31, 2007. Many Musicmatch purists are disappointed that Yahoo has stripped the latest Jukebox of some of its best features like file renaming and consider the migration anything but an upgrade[1].
Yahoo has disabled the Super tagging function that automatically analyzes songs and assigns tag elements (Artist, Album, Track Name and Number). However the Musicmatch 10.1 can still be used to modify tags for a single song or groups of songs and then rename files based on those tag elements. The software remains highly functional for tagging and organize music.
In an attempt to get Musicmatch Jukebox users and owners to upgrade to Yahoo Music Jukebox, Yahoo used the Musicmatch Update software to add a nagware screen to the existing Musicmatch install. This screen was installed for Musicmatch 9 and 10 users whether or not they checked the "Check for upgrades" box in programs setting. When Yahoo modified the Musicmatch installation, it would nag to upgrade by September 2007 every time the program ran. On installs with this nagware activated, this screen continued to appear, even though September 2007 is well past and Yahoo has dropped the entire product line. "Owners" of the Musicmatch Plus version are not exempt. Now that the update servers are no longer online, to undo this modification, remove all files and directories containing the word "upsell" from the "Musicmatch Update" directory. After this change, the nag screen will no longer be shown.
Partnerships
Musicmatch Jukebox was provided on most Dell consumer computers as Dell Jukebox by Musicmatch. As such, the branded version contains Dell logos, integration with Dell Digital DJ, and integration with Dell's Media Experience product, and a co-branded music store (Dell Music Store).
Musicmatch Jukebox was also provided to Earthlink customers as Earthlink Jukebox by Musicmatch. It is similar to the Dell product, except that it is still based on the older Musicmatch Jukebox 9.0 product.
Apple iPod and Musicmatch
On July 17, 2002 Apple introduced the first iPod for Windows, which included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user's music library and transfer music to the iPod. With the introduction of iTunes for Windows on October 16, 2003 they stopped bundling the Musicmatch software.
Software
The Jukebox has a skinnable, graphical interface and allows users to manage a catalogue of digital music, as well as CD and stream-based audio. It has a fairly advanced AutoDJ but has been noted as having a longer boot-up time than other players. The Plus version includes faster rip and burn times, exportable tables and tech support, as well as a "Super-Tagging" function that fetches for tags and album art and attaches them to the song file, allows you to customize the art and tags for any files in a directory, or rename files based upon the tags already stored in the files. These features, and others, were meant to be incentives to upgrade from the free version, which lacks them. The upgrade is done by entering a serial number which must past a local validity test.
Musicmatch 7 added the ablity to record from "Mixer In" if a full duplex sound card is installed. Musicmatch (versions 9 and earlier) is well equipped to transfer LP records and streaming audio to MP3 as it has the ablity to listen for silences of customizable level (percentage of original volume) and duration (in seconds). This allows Musicmatch to split a ripped LP into tracks automatically and to stop recording after playback of a stream was complete. A delayed recording start was also of benefit when recording streams.
Many long-time Musicmatch users never updated to Yahoo Musicmatch prefering to stay with Musicmatch 9 or 10. Starting with Musicmatch 10, several key features began to be removed. While 10 added several features related to listing online radio through Musicmatch services, a bug eliminated the ability to split tracks when recording from Mixer-in. The Yahoo Musicmatch version dropped the much favored 'super-tagging' feature. Registration keys for Musicmatch Jukebox Plus still function. However no versions of Musicmatch (or Yahoo Jukebox) are available for download from Yahoo.
See also
External links
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