About 30 years ago I met Jeff (RIP), about whom I have posted here, and he and I became best friends. Jeff grew up in the Detroit area and knew a *lot* about the music of the 1950's and 1960's, and one day I told him that when technology permitted I would have a jukebox that included every tune that made the pop music top 20 from 1955 to 1969, the music of my youth, basically. We were both sure that one day technology *would* provide for this, but of course we had no idea of what form that might take.
In the 1990's mp3 came along, and in 1998 I decided that *this* was it, this was how I could acquire and store all tunes I needed. A company named MusicMatch had created a software jukebox that ran on home computers and sold for $19.95, with free updates as they were released. I bought a copy and I am here to tell you that there has *never* been a better music management program for home users and their PC's.
In the beginning, hard drives did not have the capacity to store all the music I wanted - I think that when I started I had a 20MB (roughly twenty million bytes) hard drive, but I knew that the technology would increase that at a faster rate than I would acquire music. My "completed" jukebox takes 7.02 GB, about seven billion bytes. Today you can get a drive with a trillion bytes.
I also needed to know *which* songs were top 20/1955-1969, and I acquired a copy of Joel Whitburn's "The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits." I recommend this book, which is updated and released every several years, to anyone seriously interested in pop music. I've owned three editions, and they all begin with 1955 and end at the year before the release. For all the top 40 songs it provides title, recording artist, charting information, record/CD label information, tidbits about artists and songs, yada yada yada. Did you know that the Herman's Hermits novelty hit "I'm Henry the VIII, I Am" was a hit in 1911 for someone named Henry Champion? Oh, stop it. You did not.
I began collecting "my" songs in 1998, purchasing music CD's based on the Whitburn book and using downloaded software to convert the songs to the mp3 format. With the acquisition of "Hopeless" by Andy Williams (#13, 1963) last week, I reached my goal of . . . well. what amounts to *my* definition of the top 20, 1955-1969.
Why "my" definition? Well, the Whitburn book blindsided me. When it was several years old I had worn it out. It's a large and thick book, and pages were falling out. I replaced it with the latest version, not seeing the trap. I'd bet you don't see it either.
In the interim between the releases, the creators of the book had consulted - and incorporated - more polls, more criteria, etc., and I found to my horror that the new book had a slightly *different* version of what songs had made the top 20. Got it? My first edition of the book said that *these* songs had made the top 20, and my second edition of the book said *those* songs had made the top 20. The two sets were *nearly* identical, but not quite.
I had a Notepad document which began as a complete list of the records that the first edition said made the top 20, and which was modified by deleting each entry as I acquired the song. I bit the bullet. I went through the new edition artist by artist, checking to see that either I already had each song I needed or that it was in my "needed" list. If neither of those things were true it was added to the "needed" list.
You know what's coming, right? Right. When I wore out the second edition and acquired a third, I ran into the same problem. However, I had anticipated it and decided that my "needed" list was frozen forever after the incorporation of second edition changes. We're talking about nearly 2,600 songs here, which had begun as 2,400 and something. I had (and have) no reason to believe that the book wouldn't alter that list with every edition, and I wasn't going to do several weeks of work with each new book.
In full screen mode, my MusicMatch Jukebox (MMJB) displays 30 songs at a time. I've set it up so that for each song I see (from left to right) the song title, the recording artist, the year in which it peaked, its peak position, and the song duration. More information is available by right clicking on one of those fields.
In addition to my originally defined set, I have a couple hundred songs on there which didn't make the top 20 or weren't in the 1955 to 1969 period, but are there simply because it's my jukebox and I want them there.
If this is already TMI, you might want to skip the next post.
Showing posts with label joel whitburn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joel whitburn. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
MusicMatch Customer Service
A Rant: Part I
Sometime in the 1980s I decided that when the technology was available I would take up (as a hobby) the task of acquiring every song that hit the top twenty during the years 1955 to 1969. This was the music of my youth (roughly, anyway, as I was 14 to 28 years old during that period). I would get all the music and somehow - depending on what the technology looked like - string it all together so that any of it could be found by artist or by song title and then played.
Well, the mp3 format came along and I learned about it in 1998. My first step was to list what I needed, and for this I used the then current issue of The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits by Joel Whitburn. Over the years I have worn out several copies and acquired new ones. I believe the book is updated annually to include all top 40 songs from 1955 to the year before the edition in question. It is a marvelous source and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
The list creation resulted in something over 2,400 songs which I had to acquire either already in the mp3 format or on CD, from which I could convert them to mp3. At that time, vinyl and cassette were not good sources because the PC line in capability usually resulted in line feed hissing. Or at least the capability that *eye* had did.
So, list creation accomplished, I pondered the problem of organizing them in such a fashion that I could access them as described above, that is by artist or by song title. I speculated that I would have to learn enough about the PC to write my own software, and was ecstatic when I discovered a software product called "MusicMatch Jukebox." It was only $19.99 or $19.95 or something like that, and I would be able to access them by those two characteristics, and by slightly misusing the software's capabilites I could access them by the years they reached their peak positions, the highest chart positions they reached, and other characteristics. I'll take one, please.
MMJB was still a small company and its customer service was the best I have ever experienced, on or off the internet, even though it was all by email. I had need of it several times and never waited more than a few hours for a response. The responses were prompt, coherent, and helpful. On a couple of occasions a woman in Tennessee emailed me after midnight and I happened to be still awake and using my PC. We exchanged both technical information and social pleasantries. I recall fondly that on the first such occasion I asked her what she was doing answering my email at that hour and that she told me she was home and unwinding with a glass of wine. We asked each other about wine preferences. She was drinking "Spanish Red." I liked Merlot. She informed me that "Merlot is for wimps." Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Perhaps she was right.
In any case she solved my problems and how could it get any better?
On another occasion I emailed customer service during the day. I think there was a glitch in the MMJB software. I received a response almost immediately, from a male this time, outlining the steps I would have to take to fix it. As I began those steps my phone rang. It was the customer service rep, calling to walk me through the steps to make sure I had no problem. Can you believe that?
Alas, things deteriorated, slowly at first and then more rapidly, as MMJB grew in size. I suppose this is inevitable as companies grow, but it is in any case lamentable.
NEXT: MusicMatch Customer Service: The Decline
Sometime in the 1980s I decided that when the technology was available I would take up (as a hobby) the task of acquiring every song that hit the top twenty during the years 1955 to 1969. This was the music of my youth (roughly, anyway, as I was 14 to 28 years old during that period). I would get all the music and somehow - depending on what the technology looked like - string it all together so that any of it could be found by artist or by song title and then played.
Well, the mp3 format came along and I learned about it in 1998. My first step was to list what I needed, and for this I used the then current issue of The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits by Joel Whitburn. Over the years I have worn out several copies and acquired new ones. I believe the book is updated annually to include all top 40 songs from 1955 to the year before the edition in question. It is a marvelous source and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
The list creation resulted in something over 2,400 songs which I had to acquire either already in the mp3 format or on CD, from which I could convert them to mp3. At that time, vinyl and cassette were not good sources because the PC line in capability usually resulted in line feed hissing. Or at least the capability that *eye* had did.
So, list creation accomplished, I pondered the problem of organizing them in such a fashion that I could access them as described above, that is by artist or by song title. I speculated that I would have to learn enough about the PC to write my own software, and was ecstatic when I discovered a software product called "MusicMatch Jukebox." It was only $19.99 or $19.95 or something like that, and I would be able to access them by those two characteristics, and by slightly misusing the software's capabilites I could access them by the years they reached their peak positions, the highest chart positions they reached, and other characteristics. I'll take one, please.
MMJB was still a small company and its customer service was the best I have ever experienced, on or off the internet, even though it was all by email. I had need of it several times and never waited more than a few hours for a response. The responses were prompt, coherent, and helpful. On a couple of occasions a woman in Tennessee emailed me after midnight and I happened to be still awake and using my PC. We exchanged both technical information and social pleasantries. I recall fondly that on the first such occasion I asked her what she was doing answering my email at that hour and that she told me she was home and unwinding with a glass of wine. We asked each other about wine preferences. She was drinking "Spanish Red." I liked Merlot. She informed me that "Merlot is for wimps." Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Perhaps she was right.
In any case she solved my problems and how could it get any better?
On another occasion I emailed customer service during the day. I think there was a glitch in the MMJB software. I received a response almost immediately, from a male this time, outlining the steps I would have to take to fix it. As I began those steps my phone rang. It was the customer service rep, calling to walk me through the steps to make sure I had no problem. Can you believe that?
Alas, things deteriorated, slowly at first and then more rapidly, as MMJB grew in size. I suppose this is inevitable as companies grow, but it is in any case lamentable.
NEXT: MusicMatch Customer Service: The Decline
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