Release date: February 2001
Description: The first with MusicMatch’s new orange-and-blue-blobs logo, this one had only 65 songs. eMusic and Epitonic were still providers, but the other four were ditched for an Italian site called Vitaminic.
The only place with information on the Vitaminic songs was this Discogs page. If that didn’t exist, I wouldn’t know the song information. The CD-ROM had no tagging information; it had filenames such as TRACK1 and nothing else. It turns out they just took half of their existing compilation and gave it to MusicMatch.
So, if nothing else, this page is a backup to that Discogs page on what Vitaminic was up to.
The songs
eMusic (25 songs, only one of which was on MMJB 5.0, although a few more artists had shown up before)
| Artist | Songs | Notes |
| Amy Rigby | Wait Til’ I Get You Home | |
| The Apples in Stereo | Look Away | |
| Arthur Williams | Ain’t Goin’ Down | |
| At the Drive-In | Rascuache | The only one of these in 5.0. |
| Beth Custer | Lagrimas de Oro | |
| Blackalicious | Everywhere at Once | |
| DJ Wally | Birds | A nervous jazz/drum-and-bass thing. It’s interesting enough. |
| The Donnas | 40 Boys in 40 Nights | |
| Dropkick Murphys | Good Rats | |
| Groove Collective | Ransome | |
| The (International) Noise Conspiracy | Smash It Up | |
| James Hardway | Grow | Vocal drum-and-bass. Something like Everything but the Girl’s “Blame” from the same era. |
| John Hiatt | Crossing Muddy Waters | |
| Liquid Soul | Donkey Punch | The album was nominated for a Grammy in contemporary jazz. That’s a big step up from random free artists. This is a good song. |
| Masters of Groove feat. Reuben Wilson | Dr. No Shuffle | |
| Merle Haggard | Wishin’ All These Old Things Were New | |
| Midnite | Love the Life You Live | The MP3 is quiet. The song style is dub. |
| R.L. Burnside | Bad Luck City | Did your head fill in the last name as Stine? The song style is urban funk. |
| Solas | I Will Remember You | One of the band members had written an instrumental atop which Sarah McLachlan built her hit “I Will Remember You.” So this is a cover of Sarah’s semi-cover but it’s by the original artist. |
| Southern Culture on the Skids | Just How Lonely | |
| Sue Foley | Two Trains | |
| Superdrag | Lighting the Way | |
| They Might Be Giants | Reprehensible | |
| Tricky | Crazy Claws | It’s that Tricky, surprisingly enough. The vocal delivery makes this sound like the sequel to Fluke’s “Absurd.” |
| W | Dukes Up (Johnny Dubwise Mix) | Some tight sax loops around an insistent house beat make this one of the more pleasantly distinctive songs off 6.0. |
Epitonic (15 songs, all new)
| Artist | Songs | Notes |
| Aquatherium | Never Stop | |
| Brent Laurence | Union | |
| Elwood | Forty Five | |
| Envelope | For You [Main] | This has a great danceable kick rhythm. It appears to have left the internet, but it’s also hard to Google “envelope for you” and get non-stationery results. |
| Fog City Players | Remember | |
| Josh Rouse | Directions | This is also on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack. |
| Mark Ambrose and Omni AM | House Explosion | |
| Omni AM | Chill New Body | |
| Omni AM | Deep Sea Pony (Hugs and Kisses) | |
| Sepia | Age of Cool | |
| Sepia | Surrender | |
| Supreme Beings of Leisure | Last Girl on Earth | One of the first bands to get famous through internet promotion. It would be a shame for them to miss MMJB altogether. |
| T. Collective | Burnin’ [B&T Mix] | |
| Tabla Beat Science | Palmistry | A sweet half-time psychedelic dub thing. If you liked the Qaballah Steppers from MusicMatch 4.3, this is up the same street. |
| The Lumpheads | Re-Discovery (Crispin J. Glover Mix) |
Vitaminic (25 of the 50 songs in their compilation; as an Italian company, a lot of these songs are in Italian)
| Artist | Song | Notes |
| Afrodee | Bjanolon Janjo | |
| Bluecat | Killer Distance | |
| Chris Pi | Ching Chong | |
| Corrado Greco | Nocturne No. 18 in E Major, Op. 62 No. 2: Lento | It’s by Chopin. |
| Double Exposure | Vision Lost | |
| G-Stuff | Pooleeg | Begging for play on Soma Radio’s Groove Salad show. |
| Ike and Tina Turner | Mississippi Rollin Stone | Labeled as “Mississippi Rolling Stones.” Also, it’s a remastered or different recording compared to the one in 4.0 from eMusic. |
| Irene Lamedica | Un Giorno Senza Te | |
| Jazzedelic | Estrangeira | |
| Jurax_3x | Alien Voice | |
| La Sintesi | Bianco | |
| Loren X | Bee’s Wack | Because someone ought to aspire to be Fatboy Slim. |
| Oral Beat | Turn Around | If you expected an Italian label to have some free Eurodance, and you were wondering why I hadn’t mentioned it yet…this note is for you. |
| Pulszar | Can’t Help | |
| Quarta Parete | Grondo di Sete | Gauzy guitars in a trip-hop setting, but the singer has some bits that are very Dolores O’Riordan-y. |
| Quinta Zona | Zona D’urto | Italian rap! Your summer barbecue is unlikely to know if these lyrics are desirous of murdering the attendees! |
| Rosario Jermano | Nadire Dance | A surprising bit of world fusion that seems to have a Korg Wavestation involved. It’s way more layered than a typical Vitaminic free song. |
| Sarah Jane Morris | Right Now | |
| Scisma | Dimensioni Parallele | |
| Sergio Caputo | Bibidin Bibidin Bibidi Boom | What would this era of free music be without some swing revival? |
| The Sismi.x Dub | Hibrid | |
| Soon | Dormi | |
| Sputniks Down | M.M. | Post-rock! I learned from a 2023 re-release of some material on Spotify that M.M. stands for Monotone Mountain. It fits with early God Is an Astronaut. |
| Tenores Di Bitti | Canti A Tenore | Acapella, and weird acapella at that. |
| X (Eptional) | Driftin | Beatsy electronic jazz. Soma Radio might also have played this one. I also just got what the band name was doing. |
Next: MusicMatch Jukebox 7.0
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