MusicMatch -- ya just gotta love it

I've been a MusicMatch subscriber for three or four years. Their player is pretty good, though for playing MP3s out of my ripped library I prefer WinAmp.

You can download the MusicMatch player (they call it the Music Match Jukebox) for free, which gets you the ability to play MP3s, plus some bennies:

• When you play a song, the MusicMatch Jukebox (MMJB, henceforth) tries to find that song in their database. If it can, it displays the album's song list, artist info and cover art in its "Now Playing" Section. I've always liked this feature. The text usually includes links to other albums by the same artist.


• They have something they call "Super Tagging," which allows you to modify the MP3 tags for a bunch of songs all at the same time. When you Super Tag a set of songs, MMJB looks up the songs in their database and makes a best-guess of what songs you're tagging. It downloads artist, album and other info and allows you to choose from a list of possible candidates. Essentially, you select a bunch of songs, right-click and select Super Tagging and then click checkboxes for each song you want to tag. MMJB does the rest. This is a very cool feature.


• MMJB also interfaces with various portable MP3 players, including my Gen-1 iPod. The super-tagging allows you to send fully-tagged songs to portable player. Very cool.

MusicMatch is not a peer-to-peer site, nor is it a license to download MP3s and rip them to disc. The raison d'etre for MusicMatch (at least from their side of the equation) is for you to buy tracks and albums.

You can buy any of their tracks for $.99, or entire albums (regardless of the number of tracks) for $9.99. Essentially, any track over and above the first ten is free. And they make it very easy to purchase music. Click-click, done! If you like buying your music online, you really should check out MusicMatch.

Even though they make it very easy to buy their music, during the entire time that I've subscribed, I've only bought two tracks from MusicMatch; I've never bought an entire album, though I've been tempted.

I find that I have this enduring distaste for buying music MP3s online. I'm not even much of an MP3 downloader. Hell, I don't even have Napster, a Bit Torrent client, or any of the other peer-to-peer "sharing" applications. I think the RIAA is heavy handed, but essentially I agree with them -- sort of. Artists should be compensated for their work. Just like software developers should (fodder for another rant at another time).

A couple of years ago, I was a member of a peer-to-peer site (something with "satellite" in the name) where I paid a monthly fee and could download MP3s at will. While I was online, I had to share out my own collection of MP3s to other members. That's the part I didn't like and I still don't. While I was a member, I stocked up pretty good, downloading quite a number of files for a pretty varied selection of artists (I have eclectic taste in music. Only bad Opera is off-limits). The RIAA shut down the site. I guess the fees they were charging weren't enough to pay the licensing fees. Plus, there was that whole peer-to-peer sharing thing. That's probably what got them into trouble. During that time, however, I got hooked on online music.

I found that I liked being able to download "tastes" of artists' music. I've never liked buying albums online because you don't get the stuff you get with a CD: liner notes, lyrics, artist and collaborator recognition, artists' thank you's, etc. I like that stuff (but then again, I read movie credits, too). Still, on-line music allows me to try new artists and to decide if I like them enough to buy their albums. If I like the artist enough, I run to Amazon.com or Best-Buy and plop down $15 for a CD.

Soon after I started my MusicMatch subscription, I upgraded my subscription to include access to their online radio feature. It's nice, but nothing to write home about. It allows you to stream "stations" to your PC. The stations are mostly genre-based, though some focus on specific artists. The quality is good -- if you have broadband (DSL or cable modem). Not recommended for dial-up.

Late last month I got an email from MusicMatch saying that they were discontinuing their Premium subscription service (which is what I had, that allowed me access to MusicMatch Radio streams). They said they were converting all their Premium members to their On-Demand service for the same price, at least for the foreseeble future (I'm sure there's a rate hike in my future).

One of the complaints I had about MusicMatch Radio was that you couldn't select specific songs to play. The best you could do was to select artists. Even then, you'd get a few songs by that artist, and then you'd get songs from related artists (usually artists in the same genre with similar styles). Plus, you couldn't replay any song that you'd just heard. It was very frustrating and I only used it when I was going to sit for long periods at my machine and I felt like listening to something other than the ripped library of songs I already have.

Well, all that's changed since my upgrade to MusicMatch On-Demand. Now I can select specific songs, specific artists, genres, etc., and queue them up to play as though they're in my on-disk library. The only requirement is that I have to be online. No biggy, since I have 1.5MB DSL.

I can even add On-Demand songs to my library. They aren't physically downloaded to local storage; they're linked through MMJB to stream from the MM servers when I play them. They don't even show up in WinAmp.

So, I've reached a decision: MusicMatch On-Demand rocks!

Just today I listened to nearly a hundred Richard Elliot songs. I love his music, but after 90+ songs, even Rick got old. After that, I decided that I needed to liven things up a bit, so I selected about 25 of MusicMatch's top electronica/dance tunes. A few of them I even played over. Now, since it's late and I'm trying to wind down, I'm listening to their top New Age artists (a tune from the movie Hero is playing now¹ -- that's a great film. Highly recommended). I queued up a bunch of tunes and went through and deleted the ones I didn't like (for instance every title by Yanni. Ick). There are a bunch of artists I've never heard of, but I'm getting exposure to their music. I'm probably going to buy some of them -- not on-line, of course.

With On-Demand, I can choose specific songs, jump around, replay songs and even add them to my library if I want. Nice. Very nice.

Here's the part that I like best: you can listen to on-demand music as though it's part of your library, but you can't rip the songs to CD or push them to your portable MP3 player. I pay a small fee to gain access to hundreds of thousands of songs. I can play them almost as though I own them, but I can't steal them. Everyone wins.

If you like on-line music, believe in supporting artists and want to listen to lots of different artists (and have a broadband connection), I highly recommend MusicMatch.

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Footnote 1: The song is "Love in Distance," played by Itzhak Perlman. Itzhak is a GREAT violinist, but I don't recall ever seeing him credited as playing on any movie soundtracks. As it turns out, he's played in three movies. If you look at his IMDB listing, he's played in Hero, Fantasia 2000 and Schindler's List. A pretty heady list.