Jason Dunn
02-10-2006, 01:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://ymusicblog.com/blog/2006/02/07/new-yahoo-music-engine-you-asked-we-listened/' target='_blank'>http://ymusicblog.com/blog/2006/02/07/new-yahoo-music-engine-you-asked-we-listened/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Just a few moments ago, we posted the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Engine on our fancy Web site. If you’re a Windows-type user, go on and download it now. This release falls into the “you asked, we answered” category. We’ve taken your feedback from Yahoo! Music Engine’s initial release, prioritized it, attacked as many of the issues as time allowed, added a few new innovations, and packaged it all together into this latest release. Here are a few of your requests we answered...You told us using your portable MP3/subscription music player should be easier. In the latest version of Yahoo! Music Engine we’ve added a device wizard to make creating a custom playlist for your device simpler than stealing a car in GTA. Just choose a few artists and we’ll take care of the rest, every time you connect your device.'</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/YME11.jpg" /><br /><br />An impressive list of fixes from the team at Yahoo. I have to admit, I'm jealous when I see something like this - an application going from beta to 1.1 in less than a year, and responsive fixes to user complaints. Compare that with the monolithic Windows Media Player 10 and the glacial pace of changes, and I start to get a little depressed. Windows Media Player 11 looks killer, and will address some of my concerns, but why does it take almost two full years to fix any issues? Why not dot releases with new features added? It's still a few months away until WMP11 is released from what I've heard, and I know there are some issues they never fixed - which means I'm looking at 2008-2009 until they <i>might</i> get fixed. Sucks.<br /><br />Now back to the Yahoo! Music Engine - I tested the 1.0 beta, and I was quite impressed. The song analysis and meta-tagging functionality was great, though it had some bugs that made it frustrating to use. It was a bit sluggish overall though, and just like WMP10, had trouble with my 10,000+ songs sitting on a networked machine. I may take 1.1 for a spin, though I see Yahoo! Music Unlimited is still US-only. Sigh. Any regular uses of this software here on Digital Media Thoughts? What do you think of it?