What our customer's say!

"O.K.---as far as it goes", I had the free version for years, then upgraded.

The free version is full of bugs. Naturally tech support is arrogant and unhelpful, and basically consists of "buy the upgrade (Jukebox) because that is what we support."

Finally I did buy Jukebox at about version 5 or 6. Unfortunately, most of the same annoying bugs exist, and the tech support is not any better. (The web site help is usually down.)

The worst thing is that the program (both free and purchased) is too stupid to recognize that your computer is already connected to the internet, which is vital to take advantage of the program options and save tons of time when ripping. So easily three-quarters of the time you just quit in frustration from trying to convince ("trick") the program into realizing you ARE on the net already!

Ripping is easiest when the program locates on the web the album & track info. This is very hit and miss. If someone has submitted that info a few days ago (it takes a while to get into the system) up to several months ago (the info often drops out of the system after a few months), then when you put in your CD (and IF the program knows you are connected to the internet), the info pops up right away and you take off ripping. If this is not the case, you spend a lot of time typing in all of the info; worst of all, often the program will send your typing to the net but not enter it into the tracks you are ripping!!! (In this case, you end up going into the tagging feature and retyping it all over again! Plus you really need to go change the actual computer file names as well!---VERY annoying.)



Some other specific comments:

Yes, you do get 5 free burns with the free version---they are worth every cent you pay for them, absolutely nothing! They are terrible, usually full of annoying skips. The good news is that if you buy the upgrade, the burning is very good.

It is true that "suborganizing" is possible in spite of what some have said. In the library you simply click the window/column heading to resort by track number, album, or any other sub-category, just like you would in any program/file window.


It is true that there is a lot of neat tagging info you can enter to have an incredible, comprehensive library with all kinds of background, your own ratings, etc. The bad news is that even a very minor computer crash will wipe all of this work out and you end up with nothing. There is no way to save this info to files, so if your software becomes corrupted and you have to reinstall, you've just lost and wasted all of that time with your great tagging.

Playlists are similarly sensative. While being able to create some super playlists (I've had some thousands of songs long!), you will lose them in a computer crash. (You're supposed to be able to save them as a file that can be backed up, but it doesn't work.) In fact, just upgrading from 7 to 8 or 8 to 9 will destroy your playlists. You have to figure out ways around this annoying problem. I burn CD's for any playlist short enough to fit on one CD (which I can then rip and recreate after a crash). For any long playlists, I end up writing them out, and then physically recreating (a bother but not too bad) after an upgrade.

It is true you have no control over how and where files are ripped. You will end up relabeling, resorting, and re-nesting/imbedding folders to fit a descent organization system; however, I don't know that any program would do this acceptably anyway, you'll want do you own sorting to make things workable. (And you have to delete from your library and re-add any moved files.)

When burning CD's, Jukebox often makes errors about how much will fit on a CD. It will tell you that you still have room, but when you add one more song, during the burn the program will tell you that the disc is full and all songs could not be reocorded! (Worst, the one song that gets dropped off is NOT the last one you added, but a randomly selected one between the first and last!) It's best to do your own math adding up the song times to know how many songs will fit on your CD.

I upgraded to 9 recently. It is nice how easy it is to plug in your key for the free upgrade from one version to another, or from the free version if you have to reinstall after a computer crash. I can't say that there has been any improvements over the versions to the bugs in the BASIC functionality, especially the problem of not recognizing being already connected to the net.

It is true that the program is much better than Windows Media Player, but com'on, what kind of compliment is that? Idiots can make something better than Microsoft. For the last five years I've only used MM, so I have nothing recent to compare to. After all the time and effort of getting used to the quirks of Jukebox, I find myself very reluctant to go through another Huge learning curve-so in a way I'm stuck with Jukebox.

"get this one instead of version 8!", if you're happy buying cds and now downloading them over the internet through musicmatch's download service, then you should stick with version 7. i found version 8 a step down from version 8. this has absolutely everything that you would want in a media player, you can rip, listen to and burn cds very easily. it has very good track tagging so you don't need to go typing out the names of your mp3s. although some users might not need or want many of the features on musicmatch, i find that musicmatch is the best all-in-one player out there for people with large music collections. I've explored many different media players, including windows media player, but i have always come back to musicmatch.
as for people saying that you had to play the tracks in alphabetical order, this is not true! as long as you have the track number written on the track tag, then you can select an option to play in track order.
as well as its many features, you can also download a programme called evillyrics which is compatible with musicmatch. while you listen to songs, evillyrics will find the lyrics for you and you can view them beside musicmatch. it's brilliant!

"Excellent product... versatile and easy to use", I have been a MusicMatch user since version 4, so maybe I am one up on new users, but I find that this program is spectacular! A lot of people have written reviews stating that they can't play songs in order by track number... these people need to open their eyes! MusicMatch allows you to list many different aspects of the tagging information in your library listing (just double click on the library window to edit), among them are MP3 encoding bit rate (so you know what quality the MP3 is) and track number.
If you want to list your songs by track number, you can do it by simply clicking the arrow at the top of the column. If you want to list your MP3s by artist, each of the artist's albums, and by track order within each album, just click the sort arrow at the top of each column in THAT order! How simple is that?
This newest version has a lot of other wonderful features too, such as supper tagging and file renaming (to create standardized file names). It also continues to use MusicMatch's wonderful album-art-as-part-of the-tag feature! I love this! Everytime I listen to an MP3, the album art is displayed on-screen as I listen. This is especially fun when I rip MP3s from old 7" singles, and scan in the original covers! :)
MusicMatch is also fast and reliable: if the error-correction feature is enabled, it will notify you if it had trouble encoding something, which will allow you to verify the quality of THAT encode, without having to double check all of them.
I admit that it is a little big and boxy, but it CAN be minimized during playback, and there are a LOT of easy-to-download skins that are smaller and less boxy than the default skin (frankly, I like BLOOP, but I miss the Paisley skins from versions 4 and 5).
For less than 15 bucks, this product is REALLY fantastic... and if you purchase the lifetime upgrade key, you need never worry about not having the latest version! A+++++!!!!

"don't get it!!! trust me...and read this", note: if i could give it negative stars i would have given a -5!
When i got it i thought it would be awesome. I realised the problem right away...
When you add tracks to your music library, the tracks are put into alphabetical order. I HATE this. There is no way around it. FOr example: the cd tommy by "the who" has to be played in a certain order for you to understand the story (it's a rock opera if you dind't know) in alphabetical order, it's all messed up. Musicmatch also looks ugly, and is very clunky. I am not a mac person, but i would say that itunes is FAR superior to musicmatch. save yourself the money and download itunes for free. It is SOOOOOOO much better. You'll agree with me if you see both. (trust me)

"The worst of 3 different CD-burning programs I've owned.", Despite the overall positive reviews you'll see here, BUYER BEWARE. This software is by far the least user-friendly and most cumbersome CD burning program I've owned. Eventually I had no problems learning how to rip and burn CDs, but it still requires too many steps and clicks to get to the action.

My complaints largely center around 2 issues: Burning data CDs and storing track lists. Burning data CDs is truely a pain in the arse using MusicMatch. Programs such as this should have simple drag-and-drop options. But if you're trying to update a data file already on the CD-R, it is not that easy -- it requires extra steps to manually delete the old versions of your data. I have many many data CD-Rs for both work and home, and burning/updating them was an extraordinarily burdensome process.

In regards to saving track lists, I'm an audiophile, and I prefer listening to stored tracks in their original track listing order. If you prefer this too, do not buy MusicMatch. It can only store tracks by name (alphabetically), and does not allow you to listen to the tracks in album track # order. This makes listening to classical, jazz, or any other instrumental album really undesirable. It also makes burning music CDs a pain, because you have to drag-and-drop each track in the desired order. This should be automatic! Freeware like Real Player even lets you store tracks in album listing order...Why not this? Ugh.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"I was happy until...", To make a long story short, I was happy until I had to reinstall musicmatch. The program is fairly feature filled, and has some convenient ways to organize a music collection.

However, I originally had purchased the product so that I could use it with my Rio 500 portable player. Unfortunately, they pulled support for the Rio, and removed all the Rio 500 downloads from their site. I pleaded with tech support to e-mail me the drivers, but they refused (this was only a few days after the driver was pulled). I even offered to downgrade to a previous version, if that was the problem. All they said was no, you are out of luck.

So my advice is this - don't buy musicmatch, go with something else. They do not stand behind their product.

"Version 7.5 is WONDERFUL, But Later Versions STINK", I tried version 7.0 and was so impressed that I paid triple to get lifetime free updates. I was delighted with version 7.5 but later versions crash my computer. Before purchasing version 7.0 I tried five music management software programs. At that time MusicMatch 7.0 was by far the best. EasyCD was truly easy, but lacked many important features. Some of its few features did not work well. In extreme contrast was Nero: feature laden but extremely complicated and impossible to figure out even after several evenings studying its catastrophically lengthy documentation, Nero takes up a lot of room on your computer and Nero's unethical programers have made it hell to uninstall. It can not be uninstalled except by wiping your C Drive, even worse it will wreck havok on your computer if you try to uninstall it (other than wiping your C drive): AVOID NERO!! MusicMatch 7.5 is extremely easy to use, yet is heavily loaded with top-quality features. I especially like its volume leveling, MP3PRO that produces superior sound in half the normal file size, and optional electronic enhancing that produces remarkably improved sound from somewhat poorly recorded or older recordings. One caution: if editing is important to you, be aware that digital editing is MusicMatch's outstanding weakness. MusicMatch's editing capabilities are primitive and severely limited; it can't even edit MP3 files. (If you need to edit, get Goldwave.) Overall, however, MusicMatch 7.5 is magnificent and provides great value for the money. The bottom line: Buy the older(and now cheaper)version 7.5 and avoid the newer problem-laden more recent editions of MusicMatch.

"Excellent, well-rounded product", MusicMatch Jukebox 7.0 is an excellent product. It has made vast improvements over the earlier versions in interface and abilities, like ripping and cd burning. It is very easy to use and organize, and has a smooth and customizable interface. The cd burning extension included is very seamless and can be used for data, mp3, and music cds; I use MMJB for ALL of my cd burning, after mediocre experiences with EasyCD and Nero Burning ROM. However, if you need a digital music editor, this is not one, so do not buy it for editing purposes. It maintains a small window, (which is, of course, expandable for seeing larger portions of the playlist) while still having great functionality. The playlist and control bars can be resized or even detached and moved around the screen to your liking. I haven't used the radio feature very much, and so have no comments on it, but if you need an inexpensive, easy to use cd burning program and a great music player, you should definitely buy MMJB.

"anything else?", i know this may sound dub but do you need anything else to start burning cd's after you get this? thanks.

"Trying out the new beta version 7.2", I was always happy with Musicmatch Jukebox Plus-but their new version (still in beta) is truly outstanding. I have a very fast burner with buffer under run prevention. When I installed the beta, it recognized my burner right away and identified its speeds. There is a new folder watch function that automatically adds any new tracks to your library, supertagging is improved and it keys the original graphics for each artist and selection. The program is properly configured to respond to your specific needs. In contrast, I had been using Easy CD Creator 5 because it came with my latest burner-and Music Match is much more user friendly. I think it is best for burning,tagging,printing the right graphics and creating your own radio stations based on your library. A true bargain in my book!