Musicmatch Radio

MusicMatch Jukebox is something I liked because it had this great ‘MusicMatch Radio‘ features that would let me stream my favorite music genres to me. Now IE 6 comes with something called a Media Bar. Pretty Cool. Visually very appealing. Lots of music, including Indian Classical (though there’s only one channel for that) — it doesn’t come close to Shoutcast yet though. As far as I can see, MusicMatch is almost toast — but for two teeny facts. One: MusicMatch is still one of the best free rippers/converters/players around and it rips MP3s well, unlike Windows Media Player. Two: While you can use Musicmatch Radio freely, IE6′s Media Bar, believe it or not, requires a login via Passport before it plays anything for you. Tough! (Imagine the possibilities for a moment here — how much would such highly targeted user preferences be worth to a record company? And what would they pay MSN to get at some of this data?)