The Wall Street Journal
August 19, 1999 [Personal Technology]
It's the Best 'Jukebox'
For Playing MP3 Tunes
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
BARRELS OF INK have been devoted to celebrating the new Internet music
craze -- the practice of downloading and collecting songs in the
format called MP3, for playback on your PC. Much less attention,
however, has been paid to the software you need to play back the
music, programs called jukeboxes.
Personal Technology There are numerous contenders, though only a
handful have acquired critical mass. All are free for downloading from
the Web, but some require a payment of around $30 if you want to add
important capabilities.
I've been testing three of the most popular virtual jukeboxes for
Windows PCs, and have been surprised at the results. The best program
isn't Nullsoft's Winamp, which popularized the category and was
recently acquired by America Online. Nor is it the most heavily hyped
program, RealJukebox, from RealNetworks. Instead, I strongly preferred
a less well-known contender, MusicMatch Jukebox, from little
MusicMatch Inc., of San Diego.
Jukebox programs should do more than just play back music. They should
collect and organize the songs on your PC into a master database, or
library. Then they should allow you to create and save playlists,
which tell the jukeboxes which songs to play, and in which order. They
should also be able to convert tracks on CDs you own into MP3 songs on
your hard disk, a process called recording, or "ripping."
Finally, the programs should manage and display the rich non-musical
information contained in every MP3 file. These so-called tags can
include the song's title, artist and album, its genre, copyright date,
lyrics, notes on the song, and a picture of the artist or album cover.
This information is a great boon to music collectors and a core
advantage of the MP3 music format.
MUSICMATCH Jukebox, version 4.1, can do all of these things, and does
them better than the other jukeboxes I tested. It is both the most
powerful jukebox program and the easiest to use.
MusicMatch includes several modules, which can be displayed alone or
in various combinations. The music player, which uses the traditional
controls found on a CD player, is the heart of the package. At its
side is the playlist. As in the other jukebox players, this player
module can be shrunk to a very small size so it doesn't get in the
way. And you can change the look and feel of the whole program by
switching among various themes, or "skins," which alter the basic
color and style of the software.
[illustration]
Other MusicMatch Jukebox windows include the music library, which
contains all of your songs, whether or not they are included on the
current playlist. You can play these songs individually, sort the
library by various categories and add new songs to it with ease.
There's also a graphic equalizer, to change the way songs sound, a
recorder for converting CD tracks to MP3s and a mini Web browser for
downloading music.
But where MusicMatch Jukebox really shines is in its handling of MP3
tag data.
It offers numerous ways to annotate songs. And it's the only one of
these programs that lets you display the lyrics of a song, or other
info, along with a related photo -- usually of the artist or album
cover -- while it's playing. It doesn't automatically provide the
lyrics or photos; you have to add them manually or find them on the
Web. But it handles them beautifully.
MusicMatch Jukebox is free, but it takes $30 to upgrade to a version
that will record CD tracks at the best sound quality. My only gripe
about the program is that it is very demanding of the PC, and playback
can slow down if the computer is busy doing too many other tasks.
WINAMP IS a competent player, but it pays almost no attention to tag
information and can't display lyrics or photos. Instead, the program
seems built around ancillary visual effects -- displaying a sort of
oscilloscope while the music plays. But the controls are hard to
figure out, and the song titles and other text are hard to read. Also,
Winamp lacks a recording function for CDs.
When RealJukebox came out a few months back, some in the media hailed
it as if it were a pioneer in the category instead of a latecomer. It
has ridden a wave of hype ever since.
It has one nice feature -- it can download songs directly to handheld
music players, like the RioPort Rio or Creative Nomad. Otherwise, I
found its approach to be geeky and computerish. Instead of presenting
your songs and playlists as libraries or databases, RealJukebox uses
an interface reminiscent of a Windows file listing. It is hard to use
and understand, in my view.
RealJukebox also barely uses or understands tag information. The
basic, free edition does nothing with tags, and even the $30 Plus
version, which you need to record full-CD quality, has a very limited
tag-editing capability, and no ability to display lyrics or photos.
Also, RealJukebox is aggressive and intrusive. On my PC, it kept
trying to grab control of CD playback, even though I preferred a
different program for playing CDs. It placed its icons all over my
windows toolbar, and after I used one of its features, it inserted a
plug for itself in all my song tags.
All these programs are changing and improving, and more are on the way
from Microsoft and other companies. For now, if you want to get the
most out of your MP3 collection, I recommend MusicMatch Jukebox.
_________________________________________________________________
If you have a question you want answered, or any other comment or
suggestion about Walter S. Mossberg's column, please send e-mail to
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