MusicMatch Jukebox was an audio player made by

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

-based MusicMatch, Inc. It contained features commonly found in jukebox software such as the ability to manage digital

audio files An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. The bit layout of the audio data (excluding metadata) is called the audio coding format and can be uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size, ofte ...

and

playlists A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop. The term has sever ...

, audio file conversion, an

online music store A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings without ...

Internet radio Online radio (also web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio, IP radio, Internet radio) is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted ...

, music CD playback and ripping software and managing

media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...

portable media player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s.
MusicMatch Jukebox was bundled with the

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

as its music manager until the introduction of

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

in 2003. In September 2004,

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

announced the acquisition of MusicMatch Inc. for a reported price of $160 million. Following the acquisition, the application was rebranded Y! Music Musicmatch Jukebox. On August 31, 2007, Yahoo! discontinued MusicMatch services in an effort to move users to its own music services.

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,

announced that it would acquire Musicmatch. The acquisition was completed on October 19, 2004, for a reported price of US $160 million. In September 2008,

Yahoo! Music Jukebox Yahoo! Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo! Music Engine, was a freeware music player released by Yahoo! in 2005 to compete with iTunes and Rhapsody in the digital music market. Developed side-by-side with MusicMatch Jukebox, another music play ...

went out of business.

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. In its place, the website now offers the

. In mid-2007 Yahoo! began migrating Musicmatch users to the Yahoo! Music Jukebox with plans to discontinue the MusicMatch service on August 31, 2007. A group of Musicmatch users disappointed with the changes that Yahoo! made was formed as a result of this migration. Yahoo has disabled the Super tagging function that automatically analyzes songs and assigns tag elements (Artist, Album, Track Name and Number). However, 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 organizing 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 Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

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.

Partnerships

Musicmatch Jukebox was provided on most

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

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 EarthLink is an American Internet service provider. It went public on NASDAQ in January 1997. Much of the company's growth was via acquisition; by 2000, ''The New York Times'' described Earthlink as the "second largest Internet service provider ...

customers as Earthlink Jukebox by Musicmatch. It is similar to the

product, except that it is still based on the older Musicmatch Jukebox 9.0 product.

Apple iPod and Musicmatch

When Apple released

in January of 2001 for free it destroyed the payware business model of Musicmatch Jukebox for Mac, resulting in the rapid layoff of the Mac development team. On July 17, 2002, Apple introduced the first

for Windows, which included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user's music library and transfer music to the iPod. With the introduction of

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 pass a local validity test. Musicmatch 7 added the ability 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 ability 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 preferring 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 new versions of Musicmatch (or Yahoo! Jukebox) are available for download. Yahoo! now offers

Rhapsody Rhapsody may refer to: * A work of epic poetry, or part of one, that is suitable for recitation at one time ** Rhapsode, a classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry Computer software * Rhapsody (online music service), an online m ...

in partnership with

RealNetworks RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of artificial intelligence and computer vision based products. RealNetworks was a pioneer in Internet streaming software and services. They are based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company also p ...

. When

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

was released, users had come to find that the newer versions of MusicMatch were no longer compatible with this OS release because of an error recognizing one of the critical DLL files. The simplest workaround is to load MusicMatch 7.5 as the DLL files in the older version are compatible with all versions of Windows 7. Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) does support version 9 of Musicmatch. Old versions of MusicMatch 10 still work with Windows 8 up to 10. Version 9 had problems when it first started and it was replaced very quickly with version 10. With the original MusicMatch Jukebox version 10 you can rip, burn, and play music, although the demo version has a burn limit.

"Mic in track"

Earlier versions of MusicMatch Jukebox would give a default filename of

Mic in track Mic in track (as well as Line in track and Mixer in track) was the default name of a file created after recording with the program MusicMatch Jukebox. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mic in track files began appearing on file-sharing networks suc ...

(as well as Line in track and Mixer in track) to user recordings. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mic in track files began appearing on file-sharing networks such as

Napster Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...

, usually without the knowledge of their creators. Because of the unique name,

voyeurs Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". ...

could easily search for the files and listen to audio of unknowing individuals performing

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is ...

or joking around with friends. Several websites are devoted to cataloging and featuring their favorite Mic in track files.

References

{{Yahoo! Inc. Windows media players Windows CD ripping software Online music database clients Jukebox-style media players Defunct software companies of the United States Online music stores of the United States Discontinued Yahoo! services Defunct digital music services or companies Yahoo! acquisitions