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My 13-year-old son, not I, should be writing this column. He already knows more about Macs -- and PCs, too -- than I'll ever know. Every week he teaches me something new. This weekend he opened my eyes to digital music players.
Of course, even a geezer like me has heard of Napster and Gnutella. But I'd always steered clear of those players, fearing they would be a hassle to download and configure. I've lost count of how many times I've screwed up my Mac by messing with downloaded software. I suspect I'm not alone -- especially among older users -- in spurning digital players.
My fears, I'm relieved to say, proved unfounded with a digital player called MusicMatch Jukebox. My son, Matt, downloaded it for me, and it is a terrific piece of software. MusicMatch Jukebox does indeed flawlessly turn your Mac into a digital jukebox, recording songs off CDs, streaming live Net radio into your Mac, and downloading tracks off the Web.
THE REAL FEAR. Does that mean you can pirate songs off the Web with MusicMatch Jukebox? You bet -- although I'm not recommending it. But I do believe that the pirating is, by and large, a horror story invented by Hollywood. That's not to say the music industry isn't truly afraid of downloadable digital music. But what it really fears is a day when you no longer have to pay $16 for an industry-made CD that offers only one or two worthwhile songs. With digital music, you can pick and choose songs, paying a la carte or through monthly subscriptions plans.
But I digress. Let's take a look at MusicMatch Jukebox.
What you'll see in starting the program is a nicely rendered, three-panel display. The top panel contains the player, featuring easy-to-recognize controls. To the right of that is a small box that displays songs in a playlist. Beneath the player panel is another that lists music you've downloaded or recorded. And below that is a third panel allowing you to control the recording. As with any contemporary Mac program, you can change the look of MusicMatch Jukebox, choosing different motifs and closing one or more panels.
MusicMatch Jukebox is not just pretty. It's powerful, too. For starters, it lets you download and record music at speeds greater than you can with competitors, such as RealJukebox. That speed, for you techies out there, is up to 320 kilobytes per second -- or more than twice as fast as the current standard among digital players. Such speed also enables you to record and save music at a higher quality. I suspect competitors will soon copy MusicMatch Jukebox' advantage in speed, given that it is based on a publicly distributed format used by most digital players. As I mentioned earlier, MusicMatch Jukebox will download or record music off a disk in your Mac's CD-ROM drive. Or, and I think this is the coolest option, MusicMatch Jukebox can tune into a song playing live on one of the growing number of Net radio stations and record it onto your Mac.
CATALOG IT. Finding and recording songs is only half the charm of MusicMatch Jukebox. The other half is the program's ability to name, catalog, and organize tracks into customized playlists. Every track in your library can be named and classified as, say, rock or jazz, slow music or fast. You also can attach notes, art, and research, downloaded off the Net, to any track. To create a playlist, you simply drag a song title from the library panel into the playlist screen in the upper-right corner of MusicMatch Jukebox's top panel. You can save playlists and change any playlists saved.
While a good start, these cataloging features need tweaking. For one, the process requires too many steps. And you can't delete a typo but must start all over again. Also, there's no way to drag more than one song at a time to the playlist. Nor does the program automatically find playlists, requiring you to hunt through your hard disk.
These problems aside, MusicMatch Jukebox is a great program. You'll find it for downloading at www.musicmatch.com. The basic version is free and will ably serve most users. For those who want some extra features there's an advanced version that costs $29.95. That's a small price for a glimpse of the music industry's future.
Haddad, an Apple Computer buff, is an Atlanta-based correspondent for Business Week. If you're an Apple buff, too, follow his weekly column, only on BW Online Edited by Beth Belton
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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