Jason Cross
10-05-2003, 10:11 PM
Hey...wait a second.... this doesn't suck! This doesn't suck AT ALL! What the mother father happened?
MusicMatch 8.1 came out lord knows when... I think a couple weeks ago? The big deal is that they have a music store integrated ala iTunes or BuyMusic. I'll get to that.
Okay, for starters the interface doesn't blow. Big plus. The ripping features are really good, and they all work in the free version (you just rip from a CD faster with the pay version). You can rip to MP3, MP3 Pro, Windows Media (don't know if that's 8 or 9, hopefully 9). And there appears to be no restrictions on any of them for bitrate, VBR, whatever. You get to tell it how to make folders and filenames, too. Like, I want folders by artist then album, then filenames by track number and track name, for instance.
That stuff was in MusicMatch before.
Now they got radio stations. Looks like about 30 of them. There are little buttons to pick low, medium, or "CD" quality radio. CD streams fine over my net connection and sounds a hell of a lot better than any of the other streaming radio out there. The stations are by genre, and the play selections are really quite good. I've been listening to this stuff all night.
Some of the stations are labeled "MX" meaning you have to have the $2.95 a month subscription to MusicMatch MX or something. But I click on them and they play, and when the screen pops up saying I need to have MX, I just back up and keep listening to the radio. Maybe you only need MX for some kind of special info.
Oh here's a nice twist: the radio stations support full track skipping (except the "radio ID" tracks), and they list all the tracks on the station so you can hop to whatever one you want.
The music buying is good. They have like 200,000 tracks or so, twice as many coming soon, I hear. Any track you can buy has as small "buy track" button nearby. Tracks are $.99, albums are $9.99, same as iTunes. I believe the DRM is the same as iTunes, too - up to 3 computers per track, and you can delete and replace that track as much as you want as long as it's the same computer, with no real penalty or cost. I have to check on that, though. The format is higher quality than BuyMusic or iTunes, which use 128k. These are 160K WMA9, which sound great.
And EVERYTHING is hotlinked. Every artist name, track name, album name, genre... anywhere you see that stuff in the interface, click it, and you get more on that in the detail window.
It's not totally annoyance-proof, of course. You'll want to do the custom install to keep it from putting quicklaunch and tooltray icons and god knows what else on your PC, and to keep it from taking over the file associations you don't want it to. I'm sure as I use it more I'll find other flaws.
But hey, so far so good. You might want to give it a whirl. If for no other reason than to mess with some good quality net radio.
MusicMatch 8.1 came out lord knows when... I think a couple weeks ago? The big deal is that they have a music store integrated ala iTunes or BuyMusic. I'll get to that.
Okay, for starters the interface doesn't blow. Big plus. The ripping features are really good, and they all work in the free version (you just rip from a CD faster with the pay version). You can rip to MP3, MP3 Pro, Windows Media (don't know if that's 8 or 9, hopefully 9). And there appears to be no restrictions on any of them for bitrate, VBR, whatever. You get to tell it how to make folders and filenames, too. Like, I want folders by artist then album, then filenames by track number and track name, for instance.
That stuff was in MusicMatch before.
Now they got radio stations. Looks like about 30 of them. There are little buttons to pick low, medium, or "CD" quality radio. CD streams fine over my net connection and sounds a hell of a lot better than any of the other streaming radio out there. The stations are by genre, and the play selections are really quite good. I've been listening to this stuff all night.
Some of the stations are labeled "MX" meaning you have to have the $2.95 a month subscription to MusicMatch MX or something. But I click on them and they play, and when the screen pops up saying I need to have MX, I just back up and keep listening to the radio. Maybe you only need MX for some kind of special info.
Oh here's a nice twist: the radio stations support full track skipping (except the "radio ID" tracks), and they list all the tracks on the station so you can hop to whatever one you want.
The music buying is good. They have like 200,000 tracks or so, twice as many coming soon, I hear. Any track you can buy has as small "buy track" button nearby. Tracks are $.99, albums are $9.99, same as iTunes. I believe the DRM is the same as iTunes, too - up to 3 computers per track, and you can delete and replace that track as much as you want as long as it's the same computer, with no real penalty or cost. I have to check on that, though. The format is higher quality than BuyMusic or iTunes, which use 128k. These are 160K WMA9, which sound great.
And EVERYTHING is hotlinked. Every artist name, track name, album name, genre... anywhere you see that stuff in the interface, click it, and you get more on that in the detail window.
It's not totally annoyance-proof, of course. You'll want to do the custom install to keep it from putting quicklaunch and tooltray icons and god knows what else on your PC, and to keep it from taking over the file associations you don't want it to. I'm sure as I use it more I'll find other flaws.
But hey, so far so good. You might want to give it a whirl. If for no other reason than to mess with some good quality net radio.