Slashdot Mirror
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."
First of all, there's nothing inherently wrong with a process running in the background. Its the purpose of the process and its security, performance, and other factors that determine whether it is good or evil. In the case of the iTunes process, it listens for the connection of devices that communicate with iTunes and uses about 0% CPU time. Sounds fairly harmless to me. Do you also hate puppies and rainbows?
Well, maybe YOU don't like the idea of picking songs, so please, by all means feel free to continue listening to late 70s and early 80s prog rock epics in their entirety. However, the record companies are having a hard time SELLING full albums, hence the return to a singles model that was popular back in (yes!) the 50s. So in this case the market has spoken - mindless automatons who can't bend over to tie their own shoes without drooling all over themselves and listen to garbage top 40 radio don't buy full albums because even they are smart enough to realize that most of the album is crap and only has 1 or 2 good songs. So you listen to bands that have artistic merit. Good for you. Most people don't.
Garbage in your MP3s? Let's consider that iTunes adds functionality to your MP3s by letting you tack on much more information than WinAMP, including album artwork, playback position, expanded tags for TV show organization, different fields for display info and sort info, etc. WinAMP can't TOUCH the massive organizational capabilities of iTunes, which, when combined with Smart Playlists allows you to autogenerate complex playlists based on criteria in your tags, which, if you are as much of a music geek as you think you are, your tags are incredibly intricate and detailed, allowing for more flexibility in autogeneration.
Basically, no one is writing you off as a curmudgeon. We're writing you off as a pathetic, elitist snob who, just because you don't know anyone around your immediate vicinity that meets your standards of musical appreciation, thinks that you are the grand poobah of how music should be consumed and organized.
For the record, by the way, I'm willing to bet that my music library whips the shit out of yours. A lot of my tracks are tagged with information like what studio they were recorded at and on what day. I can autobuild a playlist based on WHAT STUDIO THE TRACK WAS RECORDED IN. Can WinAMP do that? Didn't think so.
No one cares, your arguments are shallow and not applicable on a large scale, and you aren't as cool as you think you are. Which is odd, because you shouldn't really consider yourself cool at all if you're posting on slashdot. and I do include myself in that.