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The Usual Suspects
Digital Media News
Digital Media Blog
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Digital Media BlogGoodbye MusicMatch JukeboxPosted: 2/8/2005 I have a lot of songs in mp3 format on my media server PC. Over 7000 at last count, mostly ripped from a fairly extensive CD collection. So ease-of-use in a music player is pretty important to me. Recently, MusicMatch, the company that makes the fairly popular MusicMatch JukeBox software (recently bought out by Yahoo) came out with version 10. I've been using this software since version 7, with a lifetime license key. Version 7 did pretty much everything I needed it to do. When newer versions came out, they introduced things like streaming radio stations. They introduced other stuff too, but I have no idea what, because I didn't need those features. It was all fluff. Since I started using it, MusicMatch Jukebox has become an incredible piece of bloatware. With my fairly long song list, it takes a long time to launch, a long time to display the songs, and a long time to shut down. Every now and then, it would tell me there is a new version available, and gave me a chance to update. On every single occasion, except for the major version number jumps, they completely and utterly failed to tell me what had changed in the new versions. I searched their web site, looking for that information. I searched for readme files. Nothing. I upgraded anyway. A few weeks ago, after installing version 10, I hit the speed bump that broke the axles, so to speak. The most simple feature of the software, one that I used multiple times a day, no longer worked. It used to be that when I started typing the name of an artist, the artist list would to jump to the artist name beginning with the letters I typed. It doesn't work any more. Now I have to grab the scroll bar and scroll through 742 artists looking for the one I want. I looked through the options. I searched online. I couldn't figure out how to make it work again. I gave up. MusicMatch Jukebox, goodbye and good riddance. Today I downloaded a music player that so far seems to be light years ahead of MusicMatch. It's called J. River Media Center, and until this afternoon, I had never heard of it before. Not only does it do a great job of playing and organizing music, it can also function as a home theater PC front end, complete with video, photo and live TV support. The interface is quick and completely customizable, and it looks great.
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