MusicMatch Jukebox (MMJB) editions
4.0 | 4.3 | 5.0 | 5.1 | 6.0 | 7.0
Other jukebox and compilation CDs
Mp3.com House Party | RealJukebox (1999) | Siren Jukebox 2.0 | ValuSoft MP3 Jukebox
The story
After the internet, but before ITunes came to PCs, there was a Wild West in terms of music players and what they could offer the consumer. Some programs offered playback, playlist capabilities, and file conversions; some allowed you to burn CDs (but do not do anything else with your computer at the same time); some allowed you to rip CDs; still others allowed you to print CD labels.
So there were a bunch of these programs that competed with each other on features – as well as file formats, come to think of it, because .mp3 was not yet the agreed-upon default. Windows Media Player did playback okay, but it wanted you to make .wma files out of everything; RealPlayer handled its own files for voice streaming well (.ra or .rm – I don’t remember which), but it was suspect on other things; WinAmp was great for playback and was infinitely skinnable (a skin being the visual theme of the program); and so on.
How is that worth a museum?
It isn’t.
But in the middle of this competition, companies would put their software program on a CD-ROM and put that CD-ROM in a big cardboard box advertising its features.
And because a lot of internet was still dial-up – so you could get a song online if you were willing to take a long time – it was encouraged, but not assumed, that getting music from the World Wide Web was feasible for you.
For that reason, and because (as one employee of these companies told me) it was considered a feel-bad to give someone a music player and then open it up to an empty library, these companies would fill the software CD-ROM with a bunch of free songs. Whatever bands large and small, famous or unknown, were willing to license to them (usually for exposure of an unknown size; the concept was novel to the artists) – that’s what went on these CDs.
That’s what this museum is about.
So what’s in this museum?
Great question, webpage.
I’ve collected as many of these programs – often called jukeboxes in that era – as I could find, as long as they came with free songs. I’ve gotten all the songs off the CD-ROMs (thankfully, unlike the Windows 98-era software, it’s just .mp3s so they’re easy to get off the discs – except for one I’ll talk about later). And I’ve catalogued all those songs and given each of these software editions its own web page.
These companies primarily rose and fell before Google became the king of search engines. So information about them is sparse, and lists of these songs don’t exist anywhere, even though a lot of these programs sold really well. And while some of the bands went on to stardom (or were already stars), many were small independent artists, a record of whom has left the internet altogether (or is only in the Wayback Machine).
The grab-bag nature of these programs influenced my musical understanding a ton as a teenager. I was exposed to genres I never would have gotten to otherwise, and all these songs sat next to each other like it was natural. When I explain it that way, I’m sure it makes sense if you’ve listened to my music at all.
So check out the pages, where I’ve listed the songs and given some other information. I’ve also made a 3-hour Mixcloud radio show that’s part documentary, part personal reflection, and part tunes:
Are you trying to find that song that’s been stuck in your head for 20 years?
Because I’ve been collecting these for years, and I have a Reddit account that’s just for answering questions about them, I get asked a few times a year to help someone figure out that song they can’t remember. In one instance, they had gone to the trouble of making a MIDI-type file for as much as they could think of, and 8 words they remembered. They’d done this 6 years ago, and nobody responded. I figured it out in about 30 minutes, and the gratitude that poured of this person…well, I’d be similar, actually.
So if this is you – if you’ve come to this museum to track down a particular song – contact me (restlessmosaic at gmail dot com) and I am 100% down to help. I appear to be the world’s only collector of these discs, and I’ve listened to all of them. If my pages don’t jog your memory, we can go from there.
The first one: MusicMatch Jukebox 4.0
restlessmosaic.com 