For at least 5 years now I’ve been using Musicmatch for my online listening. When I first got into it I bought the lifetime license for the Jukebox so I’d never have to pay for an upgrade. The other component is the subscription element, which you DO have to pay for every year to renew. For $5 a month I can listen to almost any music that’s out there, create my own playlists with just particular artists or classical composers, and all that.

Well, today I started it up and found out that the Musicmatch Jukebox has now become Yahoo! Music Jukebox. Looks like SOMEbody got bought out.

They do say on their Musicmatch Migration FAQ that the same engineers that developed Musicmatch Jukebox are the leading developers of the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. And “many of the same programmers behind Musicmatch Radio now work with the top-notch developers of LAUNCHcast to deliver a great radio experience.

They have a “Migration Assistant” to help with the transition process. I used it and everything transferred flawlessly. And I’ll be able to keep my perpetual free upgrade.

One thing I didn’t like is that, as with all Yahoo! things, when I was installing, they wanted me to ALSO install a ton of other Yahoo! products, like the Yahoo! toolbar and other utilities. So when installing you have to be careful to UNcheck boxes before Yahoo! takes over everything on your computer. But then again, you can use the built-in Yahoo! Messenger to send songs to buddies, and that’s pretty cool!

Overall, it looks like it will be a positive move for my music-listening activities (which means almost constantly at work). Now I just have to get used to the new interface and way of getting to all that music. From what I read, there will be even more music to choose from with Yahoo!’s LAUNCHcast Plus. They do have much better customization and personalization options, which I think I’m going to enjoy. And since you can rate each song you listen to, your tastes can be rather specifically described and your recommendations better suited to those tastes. That’s all under “My Music Tastes.”

Oh, and, yes, there’s still a free version, so check it out at http://music.yahoo.com/jukebox/