Yahoo! Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo! Music Engine, was a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

music player released by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

in 2005 to compete with iTunes and Rhapsody in the digital music market. Developed side-by-side with

MusicMatch Jukebox MusicMatch Jukebox was an audio player made by San Diego-based MusicMatch, Inc. It contained features commonly found in jukebox software such as the ability to manage digital audio files and playlists, audio file conversion, an online music s ...

, another music player acquired by Yahoo! in 2004, it was designed to be the main client for Yahoo's array of music services, which were centered around

Yahoo! Music Unlimited Yahoo! Music Unlimited was an on-demand online music service launched on May 10, 2005 and provided by Yahoo! Music. The service was discontinued on September 30, 2008. Service Users paid a subscription fee to access a library of over two milli ...

, a paid

music streaming A music streaming service is a type of streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream d ...

service and digital music store; in addition to being a music management software. In early 2008 Yahoo! sold off its music assets, including Yahoo! Music Jukebox to RealNetworks' Rhapsody and replaced it with a web-based music player.

History

The idea of a dedicated music player was born from Yahoo! audio search engine, which was divided into two segments: audio files openly found on the Web; and licensed music from Yahoo! own music service that can be searched by several criteria (e.g., artist, title, album, etc.) and downloaded for a price, typically $1 per track. Yahoo! wanted a product that would compete with Apple's iTunes and consequently acquired Mediacode —a digital music startup founded by former Nullsoft developers Ian Rogers and Robert Lord— in 2004 to build its in-house music subscription service and create a media player/digital jukebox as the main client for that service.

Features

Its features include CD

ripping Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to e ...

and burning, access to

LAUNCHcast Yahoo! Music Radio (formerly known as LAUNCHcast) was an Internet radio service offered by Clear Channel Communications' iHeartRadio through Yahoo! Music. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré, ...

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

and the

music subscription service, playlist creation, transfer of music to portable

mp3 players A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

and

USB flash drive Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply ( interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A bro ...

s. The program allows

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client (computing), client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used wit ...

users to stream music to one another (not to be confused with

upload Uploading refers to ''transmitting'' data from one computer system to another through means of a network. Common methods of uploading include: uploading via web browsers, FTP clients], and computer terminal, terminals ( SCP/ SFTP). Uploadin ...

ing and

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

ing or

filesharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include re ...

) and browse one another's playlists. Only those subscribed to Yahoo! Unlimited can add entire songs to their collections, however. Non-subscribers are limited to a thirty-second sample. One can rip songs in a variety of formats including

.wav Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Win ...

.mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

, and

.wmv Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/ digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Media Foundation framework ...

. One cannot rip songs in the

.wma Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Media Foundation framework ...

format, despite the fact that songs purchased from Yahoo! are encoded using that format. Another strange format issue within the player, the CD burner; it can burn

CD's, however, the player itself is incapable of playing an

CD. The Engine also has a number of plugins available for free download from the program's official website below. The programming interfaces for the engine are open; anyone may create a plug-in or skin to modify the behavior of the engine. Yahoo! strongly encourages users of

to upgrade to the latest version of Yahoo! Music Jukebox. The two products are relatively different in functionality. MusicMatch Jukebox has many more features, and it appears that Yahoo! Music Jukebox is a stripped-down version of the program it's superseded.

System requirements

Yahoo! Music Jukebox (YMJ) requires

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

with Service Pack 2 (32-Bit) or

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

(32 or 64-bit) with

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

6 or newer and

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...

9 or newer. Also the computer must have at least a Pentium III 300 MHz processor & 128MB RA

It currently does not support running on other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s. Due to its dependence on

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide We ...

, a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft, it is likely not to be

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to other operating systems.

Shutdown

In February 2008 Yahoo! sold all its music assets to Rhapsody. All servers were switched off by end of September 2008. Left with no way to access their

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement milita ...

-protected songs due to the shutdown of DRM validation servers, Yahoo! customers were offered a chance to download a DRM-free version of their existing files from Rhapsody. As of summer 2008, the Jukebox no longer streams online content. The Jukebox may still be used to manage purchased music and local music, but no longer connects to any online services. If one wants to continue streaming Yahoo! Music, they should proceed to music.yahoo.com and listen to "My Station" from the website.

References

External links