Posted by Kristofer Skaug on 11/13/05 11:10

Three years ago, I got MusicMatch Jukebox (in the following: MMJB)
pre-installed on my (then brand-new) PC. After trying it out a few times
(just as a media player) I was sincerely disgusted and removed it - had no
need for it anyway.

But recently I bought a Philips PSS110 Shoqbox MP3 player, which comes
bundled with MMJB v9.5 - according to Philips, MMJB is a prerequisite to
manage files on their player. So against better judgement, I installed MMJB
again.

What a horrible piece of bloat-, spam- and ad-ware it is! With no respect
whatsoever for user preferences.
Now this is the 'free' version, so probably unsupported, and IMO it's
incredible that a quality Philips product comes inextricably bundled with
this kind of crap.

My main complaints so far include the following:

(1) MMJB just cannot seem to stop nagging me about upgrading to the PLUS
version. Around every bend in the software, a hint or message box pops up
reminding me that I should really upgrade (for $$) to get all their advanced
functions. But Philips sold me a complete product, and I should not be
subject to some sort of functional blackmail campaign to pay more money!

(2) It's a buggy ordeal. MMJB keeps forgetting my options/preferences at
random (e.g. "don't check for updates" -> Philips states emphatically that
only v9.5 of MMJB is usable with their player, so I *cannot* upgrade even if
I'd wanted to).

(3) Another preference I turned off was 'autoplay' mode, where MMJB installs
itself in my "system tray", even after repeated requests for it to <clenched
teeth> "pretty please don't do that" </clenched>. As a result, MMJB is
automatically launched whenever it sees fit, for example as soon as a music
CD is placed in my CD drive. The unfortunate consequence is that MMJB 'butts
in' whenever I try to copy a CD (using Nero), messing up the process. This
is absolutely intolerable behavior!

(4) More bad manners: MMJB is so convinced of its own indispensability (and
my stupidity) that it presumes the right to mess with the System volume
control when it starts up. I generally keep my PC speakers completely muted,
as the ping-pong of Windows mouse clicks and random environmental jingles
drive me nuts. I rarely, in fact, use the PC to play music at all; I only
need to use MMJB to convert CD tracks to MP3 and get them uploaded to my MP3
player. The combination with point (3) above makes this even more
frustrating (i.e. I never can be sure that my speakers are still muted).

(5) The performance is at times glacial; my (XP SP2) machine then gets
completely swamped with the CPU and memory demands of MMJB (I'm at 1.7GHz,
512MB RAM). The only way out is to kill the beast with Task Manager. This
costs me several minutes of recovery time for each incident, any damage due
to lost work etc. not included.

(6) The MusicMatch website walks the outside of a fine line as a SPAMMER!
During installation of the software, I very carefully requested to be sent
no e-mails from MusicMatch for whatever reason. Yesterday, when my patience
with MMJB wore down completely, I went to their support site and vented my
frustrations, leaving them (STUPID, STUPID!!) my e-mail address so that they
could send me a personal and sincere apology. Haha! Guess what they sent me
instead? Yep, SPAM (offering their online music service)! within 3 minutes
of having submitted my complaint through their website. Talk about adding
insult to injury!
But I guess I should quote Bush: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice,
ahm, err... " -- whatever.

So, how can I summarize this... I HATE MUSICMATCH JUKEBOX!!! HATE HATE HATE
HATE HATE IT!

Fellow haters are invited to bawl along below. :-)
If anyone knows of (hacks) software that can be used as a replacement for
MMJB to manage files on Philips PSS110, I'd be very glad to hear of it.

--
Kristofer

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