Musicmatch Jukebox makes it easy to switch between listening to radio and playing tracks on-demand, and between playback of locally stored tracks and streaming tracks stored on Musicmatch’s servers: both kinds of tracks can be combined in a single playlist. Add seamless access to rich music information and you get a veritable Swiss Army knife for the digital music explorer. What’s more, Musicmatch has put these features into an easy-to-use package.

The software required to use these services, Musicmatch Jukebox, comes in a free, basic version and a “Plus” version, currently priced at $19.99 (plus $39.99 for access to “all future upgrades”). The free version is fine for starting out, and can be used to access all of Musicmatch’s services. But if you are serious about managing a collection of digital music files, I recommend upgrading to the Plus version, which has more features and lets you rip and burn CDs more quickly. Musicmatch Jukebox is regarded as a “best-of-breed” jukebox package for Windows users, and has won PC Magazine’s “editor’s pick” designation five times in a row.

When it comes to DRM-protected music downloads, Musicmatch supports Microsoft’s standard and not Apple’s. This means that downloads purchased from Musicmatch won’t work with Apple’s iPod portable players. They will play, however, in portable music players from a range of other manufacturers, including Rio, Creative, Diamond, Phillips, and Hewlett-Packard.

Musicmatch provides two Internet radio options:

All radio users can pause or skip tracks, and can use the NOW PLAYING button to get information about the track being played. The CD QUALITY button lets you toggle between two sound quality settings: CD and LOW. The LOW quality setting is used when your Internet connection is slow. Musicmatch Radio is only available to residents of the U.S. and Canada. Musicmatch Jukebox, version 7.1 or higher is required.

Musicmatch Jukebox can also use the active playlist to generate a custom radio station. It does this by harvesting artist names from the playlist and creating an Artist Match station on the fly. If a track is available for purchase through the Musicmatch Downloads service, a BUY TRACK button will appear next to the track name. Seven-day free trials are available for all of Musicmatch’s subscription services.

Musicmatch’s highest tier subscription service is Musicmatch On-Demand, an online jukebox service that lets you play any or all of the tracks in Musicmatch’s streaming catalog (800,000+ tracks), and which includes access to all of Musicmatch’s premium radio services. At present this catalog is smaller than Rhapsody’s, but I expect this difference to become less significant over time. The catalog can be browsed by genre, era, and artist. Within these categories, tracks and artists are displayed in order of popularity with Musicmatch users. The catalog can also be searched by track, album, or artist. On the genre pages no attempt is made, as with the Rhapsody service, to highlight important albums or artists from a critical perspective, or to draw attention to such albums and artists when they are not available in their catalog.

Albums and tracks from Musicmatch’s streaming catalog can be “saved” to your Musicmatch Jukebox library even though the tracks themselves are stored on Musicmatch’s servers. Within the library display, a streaming icon appears next to streaming tracks so as to differentiate them from the portable tracks stored on your computer. These streaming tracks can be included in your Musicmatch Jukebox playlists. They cannot, however, be played unless you are connected to the Internet. Neither can they be burned to CD. To do this, you need to buy and download the tracks using the Musicmatch Downloads service. Musicmatch Jukebox also has an explicit lyrics filter setting that can be used to block profanity when using Musicmatch Radio or Musicmatch On-Demand.

On a month-to-month basis, Musicmatch On-Demand costs $6.99 per month. But if you are willing to prepay for longer periods of time, the cost is less: $5.99 per month, billed quarterly; and $4.99 per month, billed annually. Musicmatch On-Demand is only available in the U.S. Musicmatch Jukebox, version 9.0 or higher, is required to use it.

Music discovered while listening to Musicmatch’s radio and on-demand services can be purchased, and made portable, for $0.99 a track. Musicmatch Downloads is a pay-as-you-go download store accessible within Musicmatch Jukebox. Tracks are delivered in the WMA format, with DRM imposed restrictions, and are encoded at a bit rate of 160 Kbps, compared to 128 Kbps for tracks from Napster and other WMA-based downloading services. These tracks can be played on up to five computers, transferred to portable music players (but not the iPod), and burned to CD up to five times per playlist. Music can be purchased by credit card or gift certificate. There is also an allowance feature that lets parents give access to their children while limiting the amount that can be spent per month. The Music Store is only available in the U.S. Musicmatch Jukebox, version 8.1 or higher, is required to use it.

Musicmatch is one of the best services when it comes to providing tools for music discovery. First there is Musicmatch Radio, with its large number of artist, era, and genre specific stations, and a wealth of paths of follow. Then there is music information on tap: click on the NOW PLAYING button and you’ll be served an Allmusic guide page for the song and album being played. From here, you can follow links to additional artist and genre information, and receive recommendations of other artists to try.

If you don’t have time to pursue an interesting track or album, bookmark it using Musicmatch’s my wishlist feature. You’ll then be able to return later to research it, play it, or buy it. Being able to play full albums without having to buy them is a further boon to music exploration, and Musicmatch’s On-Demand service lets you do that to your heart’s content. You also have the option of receiving personalized music recommendations. This requires that you list your top ten favorite artists and agree to let Musicmatch upload your play logs.

Musicmatch has lagged other services when it comes to providing community features that let subscribers discuss music and share recommendations. Unlike Napster and eMusic, Musicmatch doesn’t provide message boards for users to share music recommendations. Neither does it provide a forum for posting music mixes, as does the iTunes Music Store. It does, however, let you e-mail your streaming playlists to your friends, allowing them to play the first twenty tracks of each playlist up to three times (using Musicmatch Jukebox)—even if they aren’t subscribers. Rhapsody offers a similar feature, but the recipients have to be subscribers to play the tracks.

Download the Musicmatch Jukebox software (http://www.musicmatch.com) and sign-up for the Musicmatch On-Demand free trial. During the software installation, you will be prompted on whether you want to “opt-in” to personalization. If you do, you are consenting to have your play logs uploaded and used by Musicmatch for their music recommendations process. See Chapter 33, Musicmatch Online Discovery Plan, for a detailed seven-day plan showing you how to get up-to-speed with Musicmatch’s Online services.

Note: Earlier versions of Musicmatch Jukebox, 9.0 or earlier, can be run on Windows ME or Windows 98. The most recent version, Musicmatch Jukebox 10.0, requires Windows XP.

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