Yahoo! Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo! Music Engine, was a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

music player released by

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

in 2005 to compete with

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

and Rhapsody in the digital music market. Developed side-by-side with MusicMatch Jukebox, another music player acquired by Yahoo! in 2004, it was designed to be the main client for Yahoo's array of music services, which were centered around Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a paid

music streaming A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...

service and digital music store; in addition to being a music management software. In early 2008 Yahoo! sold off its music assets, including Yahoo! Music Jukebox to

RealNetworks RealNetworks LLC is an American technology company and provider of Internet streaming media delivery software and services based in Seattle, Washington. The company also provides subscription-based online entertainment services and mobile enter ...

' Rhapsody and replaced it with a web-based music player.

History

The idea of a dedicated music player was born from Yahoo! audio search engine, which was divided into two segments: audio files openly found on the

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; and licensed music from Yahoo! own music service that can be searched by several criteria (e.g., artist, title, album, etc.) and downloaded for a price, typically $1 per track. Yahoo! wanted a product that would compete with Apple's

and consequently acquired Mediacode —a digital music startup founded by former

Nullsoft Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by programmer Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. History In 1997, Justin Frankel, ...

developers Ian Rogers and Robert Lord— in 2004 to build its in-house music subscription service and create a media player/digital jukebox as the main client for that service.

Features

Its features include CD

ripping Ripping is the extraction of digital content from a container, such as a CD, onto a new digital location. Originally, the term meant to rip music from Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was applied to ripping WAV or MP3 files from digital audio ...

and

burning Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combust ...

, access to

LAUNCHcast Yahoo! Music Radio (formerly known as LAUNCHcast) was an Internet radio service. The service, which featured both an advertising supported free version and a subscription fee-based premium version, allowed users to create personalized Inte ...

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

and the Yahoo! Music Unlimited music subscription service, playlist creation, transfer of music to portable

mp3 players A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. Normally they refer to small, Electric battery, batter ...

and

USB flash drive A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and u ...

s. The program allows Yahoo! Messenger users to

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music to one another (not to be confused with

upload Uploading refers to ''transmitting'' data from one computer system to another through means of a network. Common methods of uploading include: uploading via web browsers, FTP clients, and terminals ( SCP/ SFTP). Uploading can be used in th ...

ing and

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar systems. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

ing or

filesharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or E-book, electronic books. Common methods of Computer data storage, storage, Data tran ...

) and browse one another's playlists. Only those subscribed to Yahoo! Unlimited can add entire songs to their collections, however. Non-subscribers are limited to a thirty-second sample. One can rip songs in a variety of formats including .wav, .mp3, and .wmv. One cannot rip songs in the .wma format, despite the fact that songs purchased from Yahoo! are encoded using that format. Another strange format issue within the player, the CD burner; it can burn .mp3 CD's, however, the player itself is incapable of playing an .mp3 CD. The Engine also has a number of plugins available for free download from the program's official website below. The programming interfaces for the engine are open; anyone may create a plug-in or skin to modify the behavior of the engine. Yahoo! strongly encourages users of MusicMatch Jukebox to upgrade to the latest version of Yahoo! Music Jukebox. The two products are relatively different in functionality. MusicMatch Jukebox has many more features, and it appears that Yahoo! Music Jukebox is a stripped-down version of the program it's superseded.

System requirements

Yahoo! Music Jukebox (YMJ) requires

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

with Service Pack 2 (32-Bit) or

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

(32 or 64-bit) with

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6 or newer and

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

9 or newer. Also the computer must have at least a Pentium III 300 MHz processor & 128MB RA

It currently does not support running on other

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s. Due to its dependence on

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

, a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft, it is likely not to be ported to other operating systems.

Shutdown

In February 2008 Yahoo! sold all its music assets to Rhapsody. All servers were switched off by end of September 2008. Left with no way to access their DRM-protected songs due to the shutdown of DRM validation servers, Yahoo! customers were offered a chance to download a DRM-free version of their existing files from Rhapsody. As of summer 2008, the Jukebox no longer streams online content. The Jukebox may still be used to manage purchased music and local music, but no longer connects to any online services. If one wants to continue streaming Yahoo! Music, they should proceed to music.yahoo.com and listen to "My Station" from the website.

References

External links