Yahoo! Music Jukebox


Yahoo! Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo! Music engine, was a freeware music player released by Yahoo! in 2005. Its appearance was vaguely similar to Musicmatch Jukebox, related to the fact that Musicmatch, which developed the Jukebox, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2004.

Features

Its features include CD ripping and burning, access to LAUNCHcast and the Yahoo! Music Unlimited music subscription service, playlist creation, transfer of music to select portable devices such as mp3 players and USB flash drives. The program allows Yahoo! Messenger users to stream music to one another 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,.mp3, and.wmv. One cannot rip songs in the.wma 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.mp3 CD's, however, the player itself is incapable of playing an.mp3 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 Musicmatch Jukebox 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 its originating program.

System requirements

Yahoo! Music Jukebox requires Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 6 or newer and Windows Media Player 9 or newer. Also the computer must have at least a Pentium III 300 MHz processor & 128MB RAM. It currently does not support running on other operating systems. Due to its dependence on ActiveX, a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft, it is likely not to be ported to other operating systems.

Demise

According to the Yahoo site, the software is no longer available for purchase, as it has been bought out by Rhapsody. All clients were switched during the middle part of 2008.
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.