Yahoo Music "Upgrade" Infuriates Musicmatch Users

Musicmatch, the first software that offered free MP3 ripping legally (owing to its relationship with Thomson, administrator of the MP3 codec), offered several other features that its loyal core of users clung to as others migrated to iTunes and elsewhere. That ended recently, as Yahoo, which now owns Musicmatch, has been notifying users that they should convert their Musicmatch software, account registration and music purchases to the Yahoo Music Jukebox platform.

As one might predict, the conversion has been less than a total success. Users on the Yahoo Music support forum seem to need a lot of help with the move, with most of them lamenting the loss of Musicmatch jukebox software, and in one case, calling for a class action suit:

"I have found that there are a lot of other people upset about this. The migration is without a doubt a complete downgrade. Many of the features from Musicmatch that we paid for years are now gone... I am interested in starting a class action movement and possible lawsuit if we do not at least get a response from Yahoo. It is not right to false advertise an "upgrade" and then remove half of the functions that we paid for without disclosing it first, especially since Yahoo has increased the price and taken our money."

I've emailed my contact at Yahoo asking for a response, and will post it here if I get one.

Update: see Yahoo's statement below the fold.

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"There is a vocal minority on the message boards you refer to that have voiced concern about the migration. However, our internal data shows that 92 percent of Musicmatch users who have used the Migration Assistant have migrated successfully to Yahoo Music without customer care issues."

In addition, the spokesperson pointed out that Yahoo Music Unlimited has two million songs (twice as many as Musicmatch on Demand), and addressed the "missing features" issue:

"To your point about feature parity between Musicmatch and Yahoo Music Jukebox, we recognize that there are certain Musicmatch features that don’t currently exist in Yahoo Music Jukebox. However, our present focus is on the next generation of music discovery, playback and management. We are developing various forms of music consumption (whether mobile, web-based or client app), that we believe will make the Yahoo Music experience the most forward-thinking, compelling and flexible music service available."

(via slashdot; image from lifehacker)