By simon | 08 January
Anyone remember Musicmatch Jukebox? No? Well, let me explain.
Musicmatch Jukebox was a music management system not unlike iTunes. You downloaded songs, opened them in MMJ and then played them on your computer. I used to use it religiously back in the early Naughties after *cough* downloading things via the then-illegal Napster. Obviously, I have deleted all those files since then and purchased legitimate copies. Ahh-hem.
Anyway, MMJ was very easy to use, customisable and the v9.0 was a great piece of music management software. They constantly updated it with improvement after improvement and in October 2004, Yahoo bought the software for US$160 million. Good investment from Yahoo? Well, when you consider that 18 months previously, Apple had added support for Windows and Windows XP to their little-known software 'iTunes', then perhaps not. Even up to October 2003, Apple actually bundled MMJ WITH their iPods to manage the music onto the devices, but then iTunes for Windows arrived, and MMJ disappeared. Yahoo weren't really to know what was about to hit them.
Musicmatch Jukebox 10 came and, well, it went pear-shaped from then on in. The MMJ10 release was rushed, buggy, hadn't been thought through and actually removed some of the features that v9 users were so fond of. Two months into using it. I gave up and did two things. One, I downloaded iTunes and two, I reverted back to MMJ v9. But it was too late. The virus that was iTunes was in front of me, and despite the fact that it didn't offer the same functionality yet as MMJ, I was in. I was on the crack that was Apple.
So where is the market now?
Well, Y!Music (the new company that owned Musicmatch) went out of of business in September 2008. It can still be downloaded, but it isn't being advanced.iTunes on the other hand is....well...you don't need to be told that.
Musicmatch improved. All through their existence the company continued to make better changes to help the end user experience. And it worked. Until Apple came along and innovated. They stepped back and they took iTunes in a radically different direction employing a wholistic view of a consumer's use of music. Musicmatch just worried about how the consumer managed their music when it got to them; iTunes looked at the whole process. The difference is success is obvious.
Improvement can take you a long way; innovation can kill your competitors.
Submitted by Ismail Koci (not verified) on Wed, 13/01/2010 - 11:46am.
I used to be an avid user of MMJ. V9 was the thing to have, and rightly so. I think Winamp took the reins after that for a period of time with their vast plugin selection, themes etc. Itunes as an audio player in general is sound, but not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination. The thing that sets it apart as you pointed out is the ability to browse / buy music, podcasts etc.
However it is still an Apple product, which means stunted customisation and personalisation. Something which a lot of people want. And yes I know millions of people have it on their computers, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved.
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