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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."
Amarok better see some serious performance improvements before that, it's a memory hog and slow as molasses.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
And from the times I used MusicMatch, it was the exact same.
Probably Yahoo doesn't want to go into legals affairs with the ripping stuff in MusicMatch, turning this app into a kind of iTunes clone.
Web Design Marbella Paginas Web
Maybe we should petition Apple to create some kind of easy-to-use jukebox software to replace it since they have a lot of experience with GUI design issues because of MacOS. Still, it's unlikely they'd be willing to port such a piece of software to Windows unless they had some incredible financial incentive to do so... perhaps create some type of device that can be used on both Windows PCs and Macs so it would give them an incentive to write this cool jukebox software to run on Windows too?
They ruined their TV listings this year too:r ashed-by-users/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/03/yahoo-gets-t
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...
Meta will eat itself
Seriously they should stop with the term upgrade. I never really used the service here in Canada but the mp3 conversion program worked just too well to trust it to survive an "upgrade" so I didn't bite. This becomes another example of how we are slowly losing, know what I mean?
My blog
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 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
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.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I've had problems with MusicMatch bloat for about 2 years now... EVERY TIME I would launch it, it would take so long to go out and "update" streams, etc.. So I finally gave up. I HAD bought the LIFETIME upgrade YEARS ago on it.. so if someone wants to buy my key...
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
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
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?
Sigs are for losers.
Oops. Damn bbcode extension. That'll teach me to preview. The project's name is Banshee, URL above.
My blog
Ok, ok, so it's probably because I haven't used it for about 7 years, but I hated that program with a passion. In fact, I still blame that program for every shitty, joint stereo, artifact laden mp3 on the internet.
Please ignore the irrationality of any opinions stated or implied herein.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
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.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
Get the latest 2.x version you can find. Really lightweight and supports a lot of audio formats.
Later versions suck by comparison.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Anyone out there have a link to the last known "good" version? I haven't used it in a while and would like to get the penultimate uncrippled version. For the archives, yeah, that's it, the archives...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I stopped upgrading Musicmatch years ago by permanently blocking it from accessing the internet, back when I discovered the 'old' version ripped iTunes CD's and the 'new' didn't; it was a free no-choice-in-the-matter 'upgrade.' At that moment I learned my lesson and got off the upgrade train for all my applications unless and until I understood what was changing and why ahead of time.
Ibid.
"nothing not to like" ?!?!?! BULS&*@!
musicmatch was a big hairy craptacular piece of garbage.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
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...
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
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!
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Yeah! MusicMatch does everything, but everything badly. Try Mozilla based, cross-platform Songbird http://www.songbirdnest.com/
Yahoo! == the Shit Midases.
I don't get it. How can a "free" upgrade cost money? Is there some loophole in trade law that allows this?
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
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...
One upside to the death of it is that there'll be one less thing to have to remove when de-crapifying a new OEM pc.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
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
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.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Really? I have 4,244 files consuming 41 gig of space and I find it to be neither slow nor memory intensive. Right now for me (and it's been running and constantly playing a few days now) it's using 41.8mb total (which includes the shared memory with KDE libraries so its actual footprint is smaller, though I can't tell you exactly how much smaller). It launches in about 2 seconds and all of its features respond instantly.
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 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 as your primary music player since this will be even smaller and faster yet!
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
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.
Agreed. Musicmatch has always been one of those applications that is annoyingly bundled with sound cards and OEM installed widgets...I have used it, but never for very long.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No problem. If people can't figure that out from the URL (banshee-project.org) then they shouldn't be on slashdot in the first place.
From the parent post of changed features I would suspect they either re-wrote the app, or replaced it and attempted to make it somewhat similar. Probably because they don't have the original crew to maintain the original code anymore. Happens too often.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
- 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!
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
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.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
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. 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.
MusicMatch sucked ass, too. I don't know what's wrong with the OP, but there is certainly a LOT to dislike about it. It's slow, it's ugly, and the interface is split up into a bunch of different parts in a way only a windows user could love.
The Farewell Tour II
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.
The ______ Agenda
You should never have to uninstall anything. Format and upgrade.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Gamers remember The All-Seeing Eye, which for a time was the single best server browser on the market. It started out life as a shareware product and the owner eventually sold it to Yahoo, staying on for a time as the developer. Yahoo's support for the product waned, the developer moved on, and the product hasn't seen an update in years. Yahoo is good at buying out products and letting them die, it seems.
Schnapple
I have used MusicMatch since it's inception, and loved it. My friends all sword by WINAMP and others, but there was something about MusicMatch that was more appealing.
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?
MMJB got bad around the same time its original programmer 'accidentally' drowned in a lake. Look it up sometime. It was already bad at the time it came with the iPod (of course, that generation of iPod was also a POS and iTunes was and is no better).
There are lots of legitimate reasons to dislike iTunes. There have been a number of feature regressions since version 4 (e.g. placing of UI components giving more space to the store at the expense of my own music, broken album detection code, etc), and some serious miss-features (e.g. party shuffle doesn't work with shared playlists, and doesn't let you shuffle albums), but it sounds a bit like you are clutching at straws.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
^^
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?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
since the mid 90s...in about 95 or so, it was a fairly light weight, well put together little audio program/ripper. That's at about version 3 or 4. After that the code bloat set in and it was inundated with unnecessary, system slowing features that ruined it for its original purpose (probably at the behest of big media, I'm sure). Winamp was arguably better all along, but I thought Musicmatch was easier to use until about 96 or so. C'est la vie.
Seven years ago, I remember using musicmatch and having serious issues with it. I guess it was ok, but I can't see someone saying 'whats not to like' about it, much in the same way there was nothing to like about quicktime or realplayer.
I HAD bought the LIFETIME upgrade YEARS ago on it..
Dude, you type like Shatner talks.
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 page.
Screw Musicmatch, Winamp, Windows Media Player. Give me musikCube!
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
It comes bundled on some PCs--my church PC had it--which automatically degrades it down to the level of slime in my eyes, regardless of whether or not it is a good product. It was quickly uninstalled.
Just started it again.
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.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
I remember it didn't do "syncing" (i.e. differential) updates. When you wanted to add 1 song the entire library was re-copied to the ipod. I remember it took like 20-30 minutes to update my 15gb back then.
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...
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).
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Then foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/) is probably the player for you. ...).
As a fellow media-players-should-simply-play-media-dammit curmudgeon, it ticks all the boxes. Its UI is extremely simplistic (by default - it can be customized to include things like album art etc), it has high quality playback, and a very small footprint.
It has very powerful tagging functionality (with even the possibility to script tagging operations you frequently use).
There are also many, many plugins available (to provide things like freedb-based tagging, last.fm scrobbling,
When all other methods of communication fail, try words.
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.
technical writing / development
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.
If you're running windows, http://tinyurl.com/4a4a6, (if you're not, plenty of FOSS stuff on *nix).
Loads fast, works really well, and basic version is free.
But this is getting offtopic...
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.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
IMHO Windows Media Player 11 is much better than iTunes at this point. It's responsive, good looking, downloads cover art from the web, rips and burns audio CDs with ease, and keeps good tabs on the additions/removals from my media library. I'll never be accused of being a Microsoft fan but this is one of their upgrades that went well. Really the only music organizer that I like as much is Amarok which isn't an option for my Vista machine.
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.
Winamp 5 is based on Winamp 2 and is more flexible.
Actually, AFAIK they're right on schedule:
e -4-roadmap/
http://linux.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/official-kd
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 WinAmp. That should tell you who the real culprit is.
If it's iTunes, then you were right, and can rant and rave all you want (or, better, tell Apple about it and ask them to fix it). If it's WinAmp, then shut up and quit complaining about things you don't know anything about.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
PUPPIES?!? PUPPIES?!! Don't talk to me about puppies, I'm nearly incoherent with rage that you even bought the subject up. RAINBOWS!!!!???? You insensitive clod!
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 shit to the curb it does play mp3 rather nice, it burns cd's from mp3, and it even loads my ancent nomad with no problems. It's not really that bad a program.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I have been an Audible customer for just about as long as the service has been available. I have never had an "approved" player because the list of supported players was horrible at first and then because I just got used to my player and like the way it operates. I have always just downloaded the book in the audible manager software and then converted it to standard MP3 with Goldwave. Fast forward several years. A few months ago I had some issues getting a book to download properly. It would download but always start about 40 minutes into the book. I called customer support and was asked to "upgrade" to the newest Audible download manager. You guessed it...the new software would no longer allow Goldwave to convert the files. I searhed the web for the old software and re-installed it. I also sent a note to Audible letting them know that, should the old sofware quit working, I would no longer be a customer. Many of these corporate software upgrades appear to be limiting our use of the products we have purchased from those same corporations. Total crap! Sexton
If you most load the steamy loaf under X64, I had some luck loading it in compatablity mode. You might give that a try.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
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?
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.
...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.
You're damn right. You should expect this kind of nonsense if you rely on proprietary software.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Use the mysql database. It's much faster.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's Yahoo! behind Delicious, and delicious is very useful (at least to me!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del.icio.us
Animoog.org
WinAmp does not write anything to the tags unless you specifically edit one. I use WinAmp pretty much exclusively now, and can guarantee (at least on my computer) this is the case.
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 just won't use it.
I have a hard time liking most media players. iTunes, MMJB, WMP, Real, Quicktime, etc. I love how realplayer and quicktime change all your file type associations, even when you specifically uncheck those options. Even better, I love how WMP will start to retag and reorganize your media library without asking. iTunes and MM aren't that bad, but they are slow and bloated.
Winamp is not perfect, but it's what I generally keep because it's small and fast, and doesn't retag/rename/reorganize my files without permission, and doesn't eat up my resources.
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.
I just prefer mpd...
WinAmp 2.95 is the great one.
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.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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It does not matter which application does it, I am merely pointing out that it is a bad idea.
You are seriously projecting some sort of personal, music archiving application related (of all things), insecurity onto me here.
I do not use neither WinAMP or iTunes and I have no personal stake in any feud regarding music managment applications. My comments deal explicitely with the bad coding style of any application which attempts to store any sort of data in a binary format inside human readable user's comment field. Music and MP3 tags are just a specific example.
I first downloaded Ultra Player many years back when I saw what a CPU-pig Media Player was. It loads into 8MB of RAM and with my 400 song favorites list is using 13MB (on a 1GB RAM XP system). It continues to be free of nags and cost.
I come here for the love
im using 7.3.0.54
although im not entirely convinced that a point revision mainly for iphone support would use less ram.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
My apologies, then: I interpreted your comment as a criticism of a feature of iTunes, which you do not use, versus WinAmp, which you do. Since that is apparently not the case, my entire post is moot :-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
How about how intrusive it was and put garbage all over the place and tried to take over from other apps? How about the horrible rip quality (no error detection/correction like EAC) and the terribly outdated and flawed MP3 conversion algorithms and no Ogg support, at least in the version I tried.
> amarok 4 supports album art ;-)
Actually, Amarok has done album art much longer, since version 1.4
(and before that, IIRC)
Exaile does all of the above.
> I have 4,244 files consuming 41 gig of space and I find it to be
> neither slow nor memory intensive.
Actually, I would say that 4,000+ files is a rather small collection, disregarding the size of the files themselves (it's the number of files that matter, not how much space they occupy). The memory footprint is not very important, as long as everything works OK. The more the OS can keep in memory, the better it works.
My impression is that Amarok is quite fast up until 15 - 16,000 songs, but that it gets markably slower the higher you get (at least with SQLite - I haven't tried anything else).
My collection is ~ 21,000 songs, and it's starting to feel a bit laggard, especially when I use it from my notebook over w-lan (all my music is located on a server disk, shared via nfs).
Having said that, I wouldn't change Amarok for anything else that available today. It's outstanding!
MusicMatch Jukebox has been a bloated, annoying piece of nagware since it was created. I don't see how this is news.
Also, yahoo has been a big fan of forcing these "upgrades" on people since Yahoo messenger was in about version 4.5.
After that it got shittier and shittier but they keep forcing people to "upgrade" and will tell them all sorts of lies to get them to allow it.
Older versions used to allow you to choose not to upgrade. Not so with anything about 6.0 onward. Makes me want to go visit OldVersion again.
Question everything
I would strongly recommend with a collection that size that you convert to MySQL backend. I run that way at home because like you I have a collection which I listen to from a number of devices, and I wanted it to keep all my statistics synchronized. Plus I was already running MySQL for other purposes so there wasn't much overhead to doing this.
FWIW, the memory footprint I mentioned earlier was on the version I have at work which uses the SQLite backend.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
... that whenever I talk to doctrinaire iTunes/iPod users, the existence of the store is one of the first five topics that come up. I was simply trying to say, that the existence of the store wasn't a selling point for me.
:)
(: And I did invite all and sundry to write me off as a curmudgeon...
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
You must have been the guy who wrote it, because MusicMatch is AWFUL.
I got my iPod before iTunes was available on the PC, and this is what I had to use instead. It was horribly clunky and slow. iTunes for all it's problems is 100 times better.
"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."
That's an excellent way to put it. And when you use your Ipod in the car, it makes the iPod unusable.
iTunes itself offers different ways of grouping songs than simple artist or album, but the iPod is pretty limited in that respect.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
5.31 with classic skin here. 1387 tracks, 21.75GB, 5.8M memory used. really bloated.
Perhaps I should clarify: I was more meaning feature bloat, not necessarily resources (though usually the latter follows the first).
How much CPU time has 5.x used after playing for a couple hours? With 2.91 I see a similar memory footprint, and usually less than 5-8 seconds of CPU usage for several hours of playing (depends what I've been doing).
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I have carefully refused all attempts to get me to "upgrade". Nevertheless, the thing that ticks me off is the setting in the program's preferences that sets the frequency the program waits before phoning home to check for updates and new versions. I have had that set to NEVER for over 2 years but it didn't stop the notices that Yahoo was taking over MM Jukebox.
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.
I don't know how iTunes does it, but ID3v2 allows for arbitrary tag data. You just give your tag section an identifier, and you can fill it with anything you want. Programs that don't recognise the identifier just ignore the data in that section.
If the iTunes helper service only watches for iPods being connected and disconnected, then I'm being needlessly paranoid. But my paranoia is well-earned with all the other things a Windoze box does and does not do.
I've never been called an elitist snob about my music, though. That is a new one. I'm actually quite accepting and exploratory of other musical styles. In fact, my musical tastes are more youthful than those of my kids -- drives them crazy: I have more to talk about on new music with their friends than they do. As far as I'm concerned, almost anything is worth at least one listen.
As for your organizational criteria with iTunes, it sounds like what you really need is a custom SQL database. I will be glad to craft such a thing for you at an hourly rate to be determined. Oh forgive me, I'm teasing.
Me cool? pshaw... I'm a 44 year old geek, married once (19 years and counting), father of three sons, long-term bus rider and ex-member of five failed carpools. Any pretensions I had to believing myself "cool" disappeared around the time I tipped the scales past 14 stone. All I wanted (in this sphere of interest) was some way of easily digitizing my music and playing it without having the files messed with. iTunes didn't do it for me, so if people are being encouraged to upgrade to it from what sounds like loathly things happening to MusicMatch, I thought it worth a couple of minutes to put my oar in and rebut.
I will say, thought, that I've been amused at the selection of responses my post garnered. I'll be chuckling well into next week at this rate.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
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!
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Now if only Itunes would do a search without wanting my cc number. I recovered music files off of an ipod (the computer's hard drive crashed) I got all the songs off. They are playable, but all the tag into (artist,title,album) is blank or wrong. Itunes wants me to sign in to their music store which I need to give them my cc number in order to do. Then I may be able to fill in the missing track info. These songs were ripped off of CDs not bought off of Itunes. I used mucic match jukebox to recover all the missing info. Granted on the multi artist CDs it didn't get all the info correct but fixing 1-2% of the tracks is a lot better then re-ripping all the CDs. IT was only 3200 songs.
My old buddies at Philips tech support must be thrilled. Whilst their newer players all use MTP to copy tracks via Windows Media Player, the older models (apart from one or two drag 'n' droppers) are, IIRC, dependent on MusicMatch + drivers.
Great place to work, but I'm hella glad I won't have to deal with this =)
You're also using NFS? I tried it over samba, and there was some weird thing where it didn't pick up any of the tracks. Haven't checked that in a while, so I don't know if it's been "fixed" or the problem lies elsewhere (feature not bug). How easy is the MySQL conversion? My ripped collection's at ~20,000 tracks right now, but I've only done about 1/3rd the CDs, so it's only going to get worse. These last couple of versions seem slower too, but that's a purely subjective observation.
Haida Manga
"There was nothing not to like about the product."
Gotta disagree with you there. I used it way back when, and it wasn't that great for anything except ripping MP3s from CDs, and in later versions that functionality was severely gimped.
Use Winamp, or foobar2000 if you're a power user.
This is a similar tale as what became of ASE. You'd think someone at Yahoo might start acting like they give a shit about the customers of the companies they buy. But apparently, they just slate these acquisitions for outright destruction, and for what? Maybe if we destroy enough good apps, the stock price will finally go up again? Has Master Control Program taken control over there?
Yes, I'm using NFS. I can't imagine it would be different for a samba mounted filesystem (rather than a smb:// URL) but I haven't tried.
I don't know what it's like to convert to MySQL if you want to preserve your statistics, or if there's even a built in way to do it. I started mine on MySQL from the start. If you don't mind losing your statistics, you can probably just change the engine and it should rescan your collection. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a plugin for exporting and importing Amarok library data. Even if not, it has a pretty rich DCOP interface which should make it relatively easy to do this on your own. Just type dcop amarok to see what it can do. Scripting this to export then later import it should be easy.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Does anyone know of a good media player that has an alarm feature? I still use Musicmatch because I can wake up to whatever I want to hear in the morning (and loudly). Thanks
My upgrade installed just fine. I have my gripes, but my Lifetime Membership license was copied seamlessly to the new software. I don't know where you are getting your information.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
My info was a cut and paste of an email sent to me by Yahoo Music Match support.