A year or more ago, I tried to remove MusicMatch from my system (WinXP) through the Change/Remove Programs feature (I use RealPlayer and Windows Media Player, by preference) and it won't let me do it properly. It did remove a component or two. Even now, when I want to play music it goes first to MM and tells me that there's an error and I then have to go activate one of the others.

Why is that? Just now I tried again - and it tells me that it "has encountered a problem and needs to close. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Is Music Match an integral part of Microsoft?