Musicmatch

Musicmatch has announced an online digital music service in the vein of iTunes.

I am glad to hear this. I think online music services are good and have been secretly jealous of mac users for a while. I like the idea of getting music cheaper than in a regular store and being able to only get the songs that I wanted. I like the idea of instantaneous acquirement. I also think that this will help to offset the illegal file-sharing.

However, I do not like the musicmatch program (which the service appears to be limited to). Instead of being a polite piece of software that intrudes as little as possible so as to allow me to get my work done, it is an imperialistic program that rudely barges in upon my workspace. It re-associates all of my multimedia file associates without asking. Upon install, it creates extra icons on the desktop and quick launch toolbar, again, without asking. There are an inordinate number of reminders to upgrade to the "pro" version. It is a gigantic memory hog. And, while it looks good, it is difficult to use: the interface is cumbersome and the only way to clearly understand what is going on is to have it take over my entire screen.

So, alas, I seem to be stuck buying overpriced CD's and ripping them myself. That apple does look tempting ...

September 29, 2003 06:01 PM
2 Comments

Amen. I relegated MM to an obscure directory and disabled everything I could without actually deleting it. It's a powerful tool, let's you rip and burn (I think), but what a pain in the a$$. It's like a desktop bully. Or kudzu.

Pondered by abe at September 30, 2003 11:11 AM

Cool, I'll have to check out musicmatch. I have their free player, which I use for ripping CDs.

Have you checked out BuyMusic.com (http://www.buymusic.com/)? They provide Windows Media Files, but most songs are transferable, and burnable a certain number of times. I have yet to try it, but I am thinking you would be able to burn a WMA song to a CD as raw audio, and then rip it as an MP3. That might be against the license though.

If you're looking for good music, you can check out O.A.R. (my brother's band). I like them :)

Pondered by Greg at September 30, 2003 12:01 PM