Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

http://www.winamp.com/media-player/en

by bulibuta • 13 years ago

957 500 13 years ago

winamp.com

atwebb• 13 years ago

Well this really sucks the llama's ....

Thanks for all the skins and memories!

MrBra4• 13 years ago

llama's aass! :) had to be said the right way!

carabolic• 13 years ago

Although I'm not using winamp any more, for at least 5 years now. This makes me really sad.

FedRegister4• 13 years ago

Thank you for the music, WinAmp.

Edit: Will this affect Shoutcast?

1wheel• 13 years ago

Doesn't look like it, but maybe?

http://www.shoutcast.com/

Karunamon• 13 years ago

I hope not.. there's a ton of services out there relying on the Shoutcast directory.

wnevets2• 13 years ago

Why does it have to shut down, cant they just not release new versions?

mhurron• 13 years ago

Because no one wants to pay to keep it up?

kristopolous• 13 years ago

I'd pitch in towards the $20 a year for the domain + vps.

wnevets2• 13 years ago

seems weird that would be a problem for AOL.

FedRegister4• 13 years ago

I would guess that there will be some sort of re-branding/re-launch of something since the message refers primarily to the winamp.com domain. Someone may have purchased the domain or AOL may do something new with it.

SilkRoadie• 13 years ago

Makes you wonder why they cannot open source the code instead of completely killing it.

csmuk8• 13 years ago

Probably because the codebase stinks and releasing it would end up in multiple vulnerability discoveries.

thinkpad20• 13 years ago

... which would presumably be patched, if it were embraced by the open-source community.

Eyes2design2• 13 years ago

I would have love for it to go open source maybe at that point Linux would have more visual music

agumonkey• 13 years ago

As @thinkpad20 said. I bet there are a lot of people that would fix things, provided it is not systemic design errors that would require global refactoring.

pa5tabear• 13 years ago

How would the vulnerability discovery work? Is the current code encrypted so that it can't be viewed?

My understanding of the process is that code is written in a language that must be compiled. After it is compiled, it is then "packaged" into an installer file, whose internals cannot be examined. After it is installed, it then consists of a directory full of files which help run the program, but these can still not be examined.

Is it true that the code cannot be seen at all these stages? No way to reverse engineer it?

And by open sourcing, an experienced person could see ways to break the code by causing infinite loops, creating false helper files, using a fake "mp3" file, etc?

Touche2• 13 years ago

XMMP already exists.

FedRegister4• 13 years ago

Except it is mostly abandoned. It requires GTK1 and hasn't been updated since 2007.

orbitur• 13 years ago

Like most dead closed-source apps, probably licensing.

vomitcuddle5• 13 years ago

Winamp has pretty much been Adware since Nullsoft was bought by AOL. It takes time to get an old proprietary codebase into a state where it can be released publicly. It could contain poor written code, rude comments, adware, phoning home, GPL or patent violations, secret RIAA backdoors, etc.

noep• 13 years ago

gubatron, you've been banned for a year now.

pit3• 13 years ago

First Sonique, now this? At least we've still got foobar2000.

xal• 13 years ago

Thank you Justin Frankel for this wonderfully whimsical piece of software and all the code you have shared over the years. I wouldn't have been a programmer if it weren't for you being providing such a stellar role model.

paws• 13 years ago

Amen! Winamp was not only whimsical, but also one of the first widely adopted catalysts to the rise of the digital economy.

MrBra4• 13 years ago

And I bet many people don't even know that after Winamp Justin Frenkel started making his hands dirty with digital audio workstation coding and made a fantastic one! http://www.reaper.fm/ with a unbelievable set of features for 4 Mb (yessir!) and super competitive licensing options (but you can still try the full software free with no limitations whatsoever!). If you make music with your Pc or Mac this will shock you on many levels, starting from filesize! This guy knows what he's doing! Thanks Justin! If winamp code will be made public there will be a lot to learn!

diminish• 13 years ago

Wow, i learned Reaper as part of a coursera course on Earsketch of Georgia Tech. I would never have guessed reaper was connected to winamp this way. Reaper is indeed a non-bs daw, among so many great ones....

sethhochberg• 13 years ago

I used Winamp for years, and have used Reaper for years and didn't realize they were connected. Makes perfect sense now that I think about it. Thanks for pointing that out.

zem• 13 years ago

love this bit from http://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php:

Honest Business Model We offer a good product at a fair price.

We don't spend money and effort on marketing, complicated piracy protection, or other things that do not directly improve REAPER and the user experience.

We think the good will generated by playing fair and being responsive to users is more valuable to our business than short-term profits.

___1___• 13 years ago

Reaper is a fantastic piece of software!

boolean• 13 years ago

Some insights from him: http://bigthink.com/users/justinfrankel

johnx123-up• 13 years ago

Dmitry Boldyrev's take on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6773648

51Cards• 13 years ago

Too bad, I liked their Android player as well. One of the few pieces of software I have used continuously for... oi... longer than I care to admit. Makes me sad.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Android user here too. I remember just a year ago I tried a dozen apps for ShoutCast playing and it was the best. Sad to see it go. Used it a lot back on Windows back in the day when that was my OS as well. Was one of the few players with lots of high quality skins, including large size ones, and game pad controls, great for parties.

vanwilder77• 13 years ago

Is it only me, or there is some JS <script> tag in winamp's <title>?

Baadier_Sydow• 13 years ago

Nope, I see it too. Some ad code from what I can see.

aroman• 13 years ago

yup, my browser is displaying getting fragments of html at the top of the rendered page.

piyush_soni4• 13 years ago

I noticed that the first thing too. Well, early signs of the website completely shutting off ... sigh ...

Eyes2design2• 13 years ago

Its a A(W)OL failed code.

pritambaral• 13 years ago

I feel like I already know the answer but I really hope they release the source code. At least the community can take Winamp forward then.

jdorfman• 13 years ago

While I haven't used Winamp in years, this still makes me kind of sad. Justin Frankel & Co. really changed the game.

bluedino2• 13 years ago

Relive the nostalgia through this Ars article that's not half bad:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-...

AndrewKemendo• 13 years ago

I still use Winamp as my main musicplayer - it's customizable, import/exports to iPod easily, doesn't spam me with updates, doesn't force me to buy things through it, reads basically every format and above all it is really light.

It's a shame - seems like it died because it doesn't have a content purchasing mechanism forced on the user.

tikumo• 13 years ago

I still use Winamp on every PC I own.. Even bought a license but i never bother to add it.

luisehk• 13 years ago

I would love to contribute if there was a public repo.

Demiurge• 13 years ago

Still use it and prefer it to VLC or Foobar. I hope they opensource it, but I suspect it's unlikely? Would be cool to see all old versions too.

iamleppert• 13 years ago

Just in time for me to download and get my latest skin.

jbk2• 13 years ago

If you want a nice, cross-platform, sane, fast alternative, including streaming between users, you should have a look at the open source Tomahawk. http://www.tomahawk-player.org/

eropple• 13 years ago

Tomahawk is the only cross-platform media player I've seen that looks really good on OS X, too. I don't have much need for a desktop media player anymore with a phone always in my pocket, but I really enjoyed using it when I did.

satluj• 13 years ago

Does this affect SHOUTcast?

Elepsis• 13 years ago

Wow, the end of an era.

Maybe it's just that it's what I learned to use first, but for a scattered library of downloaded music across multiple languages, etc., I still haven't found a clearly better solution. It was trivial and fast to find the songs I was looking for, either by filename or by ID3 data, and get them playing.

I suppose that it turns out the world has changed and this isn't how most people consume music anymore, and the writing's been on the wall for a while. But it's incredibly sad to see that model of media consumption finally dying with a whimper. I'm not sure if there are even any modern alternatives for Windows that still optimize for a large library of local music with poor ID3 data quality.

sharkweek• 13 years ago

Nothing will ever beat the joys of finding new "skins" for the Winamp player -- I had so many amazing ones lined up, and loved nothing more than switching them all out.

Sad to see it go...

IT REALLY WHIPS THE LLAMA'S ASS

yashg2• 13 years ago

I had even created a few skins back then. The CDs that came with computer magazines were a great source of new skins.

weland• 13 years ago

I still do that fairly often. Audacious can load Winamp skins. Sometimes its interface borks on my collection (35,000+ songs), but it's responsive enough.

My desktop still looks very much like it did in the 1990s...

dakrisht• 13 years ago

Those were the days!

End of an era. Sad day.

masklinn• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if there are even any modern alternatives for Windows that still optimize for a large library of local music with poor ID3 data quality.

Foobar 2k works very, very well.

math0ne• 13 years ago

Seconded, f2k works very well for super large complicated music collections. Prob not as easy to setup as winamp but you can more with f2k. Way more.

galaktor• 13 years ago

I like the ability to play archives of music files (zip,...) which are then uncompressed on-the-fly .

mbell2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if there are even any modern alternatives for Windows that still optimize for a large library of local music with poor ID3 data quality.

I've been off windows for a few years now but I used to use Media Monkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/) for managing a very large collection of poorly tagged music I'd collected over the years, lots of live recordings and whatnot. It's definitely not as clean a player as winamp was but it did manage the library / tagging bits quite well. It seems to still be active so may be worth a look.

thelamest• 13 years ago

For a multiplatform solution, I used a MusicBrainz Picard client for batch autoidentification and ID3 correction. However currently I feel that I wasted too many hours of my life hoarding and caring for a local mp3/soulseek library and nowadays only listen to online music.

Semaphor3• 13 years ago

MediaMonkey [1] is awesome to find something. It's mainly a music organizer that just happens to be able to play music but it works great even with scattered single mp3 files. Autoplaylists [2], scriptable and extensive search options. Been using it for over 6 years now and never looked back :)

[1] http://www.mediamonkey.com

[2] Autoplaylists are only available for the Gold version.

twentysix2• 13 years ago

Media Monkey was quite useful in adding mp3 tags the way I wanted and organizing the entire library.

codereflection• 13 years ago

+1 for MediaMonkey, been using it for 5+ years.

kissickas• 13 years ago

I definitely recommend MediaMonkey Gold. It will keep your library organized, but however you want it, with no hassle at all. And if you're insane like me and keep a flac library, you can keep an mp3 mirror for your mp3 player/phone.

julianz• 13 years ago

As others have said, foobar2000 for the minimalist, free approach with lots of configuration options, or MediaMonkey for a really good bit of paid software. The paid version of MM syncs perfectly well with iDevices and pretty much anything else too. Highly recommended. Also it doesn't force you into any particular directory structure in your music library so it'll take what you give it.

Jagat2• 13 years ago

I recently fixed the id3 tags of all the mp3 music I own using MusicBrainz picard. Very useful software that uses a global database of music signatures.

ansgri2• 13 years ago

As others have said, we still has AIMP [aimp.ru]. They're clearly losing on not having a good English website.

bbx• 13 years ago

Was using Winamp 5 for the past year but recently switched back to v2.95, which is allegedly the best version out there.

Although it's 10 years old (!!), it's still the best music player available: lightweight, fast, responsive, and kept simple.

I had hopes for the Windows 7 Media Player. But it turned out to be a dreadful experience.

  Me: Can't I pause that song by hitting space?  
  WMP: No, there are no keyboard shortcuts!
  Me: I wanna play all the songs of this folder!
  WMP: Ok, but I'll mess up the order! By the way, are you interested in purchasing
  more songs from this artist? Cause I got a VirginMega link just right here!
  Me: No thanks...
  WMP: Why not? I mean, iTunes gets away with it, why can't I?
  Me: I just want to play some music.
  WMP: Really?? JUST that??
  Me: I wish.

sandGorgon2• 13 years ago

Did you ever try Foobar 2k - its arguably a better replacement for Winamp on windows

delluminatus• 13 years ago

I think foobar2000 was created by a (the?) developer who worked on Winamp many years ago, before it was bought.

kristofferR• 13 years ago

TheSOB88, you're hellbanned so barely anyone can see your comments.

mtrimpe• 13 years ago

TheSOB88, you've been hell banned for almost half a year by now.

teh_klev• 13 years ago

I agree, I've used foobar2000 [1] for over ten years when Winamp (my previous goto music player) started to get all crashy and hangy for no good reason. It's pretty solid, can handle massive playlists and has nice clean and simple UI with no cruft. My only wish is that they did foobar2000 for Android.

[1] http://www.foobar2000.org/

PavlovsCat2• 13 years ago

also nice: http://www.aimp.ru

drakeandrews• 13 years ago

Does it fade out songs when you pause them?

If so, where can I download it and where can I donate to whoever wrote it?

notJim2• 13 years ago

Agree about Foobar. It's about the only app from Windows that I miss when using OS X.

Anyone have a Mac player they use with similar philosophy/featureset to Foobar?

throwmeaway2525• 13 years ago

You just weren't meant for each other!

ygra• 13 years ago

Ctrl+P was the shortcut for Pause, if I remember correctly. WMP wasn't that bad, but Foobar fits my needs much better.

For a ten-year old Winamp I'd have my doubts about Unicode support at the very least.

twentysix2• 13 years ago

You should check out aimp[1]. It looks and performs like winamp and has similar functionality.

[1] http://www.aimp.ru/

ansgri2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, recently they started messing with the design and the result is much worse than transition from Winamp 5.3x to better versions.

Multiple playlist tabs, though, are great. Fortunately Audacious has them too.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

Give AIMP a shot. Same as winamp2 but with built in flac and cue support.

m_ram• 13 years ago

I used Winamp heavily until the version where they added video support. That version was extremely buggy for me and I used the previous version for several years until I found Foobar2000.

It looks like 2.90 was when they added video support:

"added integrated full featured video support (NSV and DirectShow (AVI,ASf,MPEG,etc))" -- http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=130748

AsymetricCom3• 13 years ago

The nice thing about old, simple software is that the attack vectors are often known publicly and are easy to work around. In the instance of Winamp, older versions of 2.x have a buffer overflow exploit in the playlist parsing. So.. don't load playlists from untrusted sources, something most people never do anyway.

rplnt• 13 years ago

There's Winamp Lite for you. I don't miss anything from the pre-3 times.

fddlr• 13 years ago

I use Windows 7 WMP every day because the media keys on my laptop only work with that and I have never ever encountered any of those problems you are talking about.

- I can pause/unpause with space.

- The song order remains after I drag in the folder.

- Right after the very first start (i.e. on clean win7), it asks you if you want to see ads of songs of similar artists you listen to.

zacharycohn• 13 years ago

I always preferred 2.89, but that's mostly just me being picky.

mikestew• 13 years ago

WMP is why I bought an iPod. As a Microsft employee at the time, I struggled longer than any mortal should to get WMP to sync music to my 2003-era Windows Phone. I eventually realized that any kind of synchronization and general usefulness in using WMP with a Windows Phone was nothing but marketing lies. So one day I said, "get in the car, honey, we're going to buy iPods."

iPods led to iPhones, which led to iOS development and Macs, to the point that there are no more Windows machines in the house and I haven't done Windows development in about five years.

All kicked off by the fact that MSFT couldn't make a software music player that didn't suck.

username42• 13 years ago

I have also an old version of winamp because a melomane of my friends told me the transitions between songs was better in old winamp than in recent one.

computer3• 13 years ago

I always used Winamp on Windows, so when I switched to Linux I tried basically every single open-source alternative that worked with my workflow: Per-song ratings, a nested Genre/Artist/Album/Song library browser, global hotkeys, able to handle a collection of >100 GB and a useful playlist/queue system.

For anyone else looking for the same thing: the one that I ended up choosing was http://gmusicbrowser.org/. See http://gmusicbrowser.org/screenshots/ListsLibraryContext.png.

byuu• 13 years ago

I'll throw in my two cents for Audacious, see: http://audacious-dvb.sourceforge.net/screenshot.png

It probably lacks some of the advanced stuff you would want, but I use it as I still do with Winamp: setup keyboard hotkeys to execute audacious -[rft] (skip around in songs from any app), load a folder (or folders) of songs and play them. Throw on ProjectM and you have a poor man's substitute for Milkdrop. And there's Shoutcast support as well.

The UI runs in skinned mode (pictured above) or in a more traditional mode that doesn't look out of place on your desktop.

sanyi• 13 years ago

I did the same thing, ended up with cmus: http://cmus.sourceforge.net/

computer3• 13 years ago

Thanks for that suggestion. Looking at its documentation, it seems that it does not support rating songs. Is that correct?

mrb• 13 years ago

I use cmus too. For those who don't know it is a command line music player with a VIM-like command line interface ("/" to search, ":set x=x" to set various options).

prima-facie• 13 years ago

MPD is pretty popular too http://www.musicpd.org/ It has a client/server model and you can create your own music streaming service by controlling it remotely and streaming back over http. ncmpc/ncmpcpp is a client for mpd that resembles cmus quite a lot.

wozniacki• 13 years ago

How come Winamp is shutting down and Real Player still around !?!?

Notwithstanding that Real Player was quite popular in Asia, a few years ago, during the portable media player years.

everyone• 13 years ago

I have not seen a better music player.

Lightweight

Unobtrusive, customisable, highly functional UI

Fades out tracks when u stop (to not have a harsh cut off waveform)

Its what I currently use. Current build will probably run on windows for a loong loong time to come tho.

vomitcuddle5• 13 years ago

foobar2000 has all of those features

recursive2• 13 years ago

Doesn't require customization to be usable.

bluedino2• 13 years ago

I remember as a teen talking to the developers on IRC, in one of the Windows development channels. I remember thinking they were crazy because they didn't want to use the standard Windows components to do the UI. I also remember wondering why anyone bother spending a half hour downloading 1 song over a 56k modem when you could just set your Sony Discman on top of your computer!

Then they started branching out and worked with skinnable UIs, then went totally crazy and built things like ShoutCast, streaming music over the internet was a crazy idea at the time. Amazing group of guys that built that and were willing to learn anything and put incredible amounts of time and effort into a project.

da02• 13 years ago

Do you have any similar experiences like this with other teams or products?

piyush_soni4• 13 years ago

Even though I moved to another player on my desktop long ago, I still use it on my Android device. Sad that it's going away :(. They should definitely open source it.

GBiT• 13 years ago

Please open source it. It is still best player around with classic skin.

aram• 13 years ago

My thoughts exactly. It would be great if they would open-source the code.

atlbeer• 13 years ago

After this many years.. I'd be really interested to see how clean/mangled the code is

washedup• 13 years ago

Brings up a great question: What are the alternatives to Winamp? (No iTunes please)

jbk2• 13 years ago

Tomahawk. http://www.tomahawk-player.org/

Foobar2k. http://www.foobar2000.org/

srgseg2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the Tomahawk recommendation - it was very nearly what I was looking for.

Unfortunately it does not support the Mac Play/Pause/etc keys. I'm staggered that such an otherwise well put together application lacks such basic functionality.

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

XMMS - http://www.xmms.org/

Aardwolf2• 13 years ago

Indeed. I still use the 100% perfect XMMS 1.

Audacity and XMMS 2 both were a lot worse for some reason (like slower, weird bugs, needlessly unneeded server/client model, ...)

In XMMS 1, you can have 10000s of songs in the playlist (i.e. your whole harddisk), and jump to any of them immediately by just pressing the "j" key and typing part of its name, and it remains blazing fast.

Not sure how Winamp was these days. I remember it was good at version 2, then starting from version 5 ("2 + 3"), it became bloated.

computer3• 13 years ago

http://gmusicbrowser.org/ is the most similar open source music player, in my experience.

cookiecaper• 13 years ago

Clementine is a great multi-platform open-source clone of Amarok 1.4.x. A little different from the old Winamp/XMMS "tape deck" feel, but very responsive and light with many modern features.

shortlived• 13 years ago

Another vote for Clementine. Nice, clean audio player, with the right number of features.

thallian• 13 years ago

That's my favourite too. Only thing missing for me is mpd support but that is maybe not an everyday requirement.

diadara• 13 years ago

Clementine is great, but I sometimes wish they could implement some scripting/plugin mechanism somehow .

jlgreco• 13 years ago

I use to love Amarok back in the 1.4.x days, but after Amarok messed everything up with 2.0, I swore it off and wrote my own XMMS2 client. Clementine wasn't out yet and I decided that the only way to get something that I wouldn't hate would be to write it myself.

These days I just use zsh and mplayer though. Apparently all of my use-cases sum up to "play one or more albums, perhaps shuffling them first". I've given Clementine a shot, and it is quite like Amarok use to be, but now it all seems like clutter.

Semaphor3• 13 years ago

MediaMonkey http://www.mediamonkey.com/

crowbar• 13 years ago

I've had pretty good experience with AIMP. Very similar to WinAmp in most regards. (http://www.aimp.ru/)

srgseg2• 13 years ago

I loved WinAmp - now I'm using Vox on Mac. It is much more basic but it's very polished and is the best of the players I tried http://coppertino.com/vox/

daveid• 13 years ago

foobar2000 is great for Windows.

sparkie• 13 years ago

I'm surprised MPD[1] isn't favored a bit more on HN. I primarily use ncmpcpp on desktop, but fall back to ario when using gnome, and MPDroid from android.

The simplicity is great. I have a single NAS containing my entire collection connected to some speakers. In another room I have a rasp pi connected to a different set of speakers which streams the music being played via Icecast2. I can control the music in either room using pretty much any device connected to the network (PC, laptop, pi, tablet, phone), and also stream my collection when not at home.

I don't know of any particular client that's similar to winamp or itunes, but there's a lot to chose from[2], although many of those are a bit dated.

[1] http://www.musicpd.org/ [2]:http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients

mgr86• 13 years ago

I do enjoy my MPD/ncmpcpp setup as well.

however, I also use plex connected to my roku for other media needs. But, I often find when on the go I will use plex on my phone primarily for music...or a superior remote for the roku...

titraxx• 13 years ago

On Windows, MusicBee is pretty good with lot of possibilites. http://getmusicbee.com/

ilcavero• 13 years ago

+1 on MusicBee, can't praise it enough

marris• 13 years ago

MusicBee is awesome!

sheldor• 13 years ago

Having used Winamp for over a decade, I switched to MusicBee and never looked back. The level of customization, fluidity and smoothness were all I was looking in a media player. While it's not as lightweight as foobar it feels a lot more polished.

Sad to see the old folk go though.

pit3• 13 years ago

This one is a little esoteric, but Billy is a cool, incredibly minimalist audio player:

http://sheepfriends.com/index-page=billy.html

Unfortunately, it looks like the site's downloads are unavailable right now (suffering from nostalgia overload?), but it's definitely worth checking out:

    * tiny -- like, 500K
    * gapless playback
    * 100% controllable by keyboard

yitchelle• 13 years ago

Glad you mentioned this. This is my favorite, out of the way player. All I want is to just listen to the music and Billy does it.

thrillgore• 13 years ago

Imagine if they opened the sources on this...

codegeek• 13 years ago

Nostalgia. I remember the good old days just a decade ago when we would download any song we want (courtesy napster/kazaa) and the default music player would be: yep Winamp hands down. Keyboard shortcuts were so convenient. It just seems like we have headed in the wrong direction with how music is managed on our computers/devices etc. Not to mention the beautiful skins that we could apply for funkiness. RIP winamp and you will be missed.

ibudiallo• 13 years ago

Why is this the title of the page?

Is the title an Ad?

duncans• 13 years ago

I'll hazard a guess that they have some dreadful ad platform that greps keywords on the site and replaces them with a mouseover popup ad.

caruana• 13 years ago

this sucks, let's start a form to keep WinAmp alive :)

eli• 13 years ago

Ars had a really nice article about the history of Winamp and of what went wrong: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-...

AsymetricCom3• 13 years ago

I think what "went wrong" can be summed up in a sentence. The player was never built to be a publishing platform or had any other monetization angle built into it.

As soon as it started getting features that would support this, the technical audience saw it coming a mile away and never adopted the required usage patterns needed to leverage such a monetization strategy. And not just because they wanted to avoid paying for music, but because the service model is just a pain in the ass compared to the self-service model.

"It could have been Pandora" ignores the fact that Pandora basically sucks and people just tolerate it. People want to be in control of their software despite what the business fucks running "IT" think now, conceptualizing a "service" where none is needed, trying to pull infinite profit from such trivial functions such as routing packets correctly or parsing compressed audio and routing it through hardware to a speaker without pointless and pathetic DRM algorithms trying to detect time-skewed copyright audio.. sigh. by setting the bar so low that people think that shitfuck-suck software is what you have to put up with unless you have "long term support" or other wedges into your conceptual/computational sovereignty to do something as simple as publish a document and expect it to be readable on another computer in 10 years, a problem that was solved 200 years ago is now the cutting edge of business technology and development, fueling well known multinationals such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

Computing never was meant to be a platform for economic revolution, it just abstracts away paper work. You still have the exact same problems as with the internet as without it. I won't say the internet bubble is over until the world is actually simpler with computers instead of way, way more complicated and outright retarded in many aspects.

NO, WINAMP DIDN'T FAIL, in contrary, economic motivations failed to make Winamp suck, failed to steal a public resource and public work. Failed to co-opt the direction and passion of artists. AOL failed to capitalize on selfless engineering that actually solved a problem the correct way, it failed to corrupt the best solution with advertising indicators and economic feedback loops built into a market, shoehorned into an audio player. It failed to take us back instead of forward, like technology is supposed to.

I think the clearest indicator that WINAMP is a success, is the fact that XMMS exists, the fact that people use version 2.x without AOL's "support", 10+ years since release. It's a simple idea: a media player that supports plugins via a standardized API. (a real standard, not a "living standard" business-oxymoron) People still use it, for business and personal usage, and it doesn't tax them to do it, any more than a screwdriver taxes you, but not like the way a "service" taxes you.

AsymetricCom3• 13 years ago

Also this: http://mlipod.sourceforge.net/

paddyoloughlin• 13 years ago

Geiss is my favourite music visualisation program

slig3• 13 years ago

It's been a couple of years since I tried to find a good alternative to iTunes on OS X. Does it exist yet? Is there a Winamp for mac yet?

pax• 13 years ago

Possibly Vox: http://coppertino.com/vox/

slig3• 13 years ago

Thanks! I'll try as soon as I upgrade from 10.6.

glomph• 13 years ago

There is also http://cogx.org/ (but it is a lot more minimal)

axitanull• 13 years ago

You can also use Wine + Foobar2000 (+plugins). It's running pretty smooth on my Mac (albeit rather ugly in terms of appearance)

bombtrack• 13 years ago

I have purchased Parallels and also recently upgraded to v9 _just_ to run the Windows version of Winamp as my main mp3 player. Running Parallels in "coherence" mode makes Winamp look/act/run basically as if it were any other OS X app. It's amazing.

albertzeyer• 13 years ago

I'm working on an own player which supports >=MacOSX 10.6.

Maybe it is already usable enough for you.

http://albertz.github.io/music-player/

slig3• 13 years ago

Hi Albertz,

It looks something I've been looking. I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the extra effort on keeping it 10.6-compatible!

taopao2• 13 years ago

I have a lot of hardware that's SOL if Shoutcast goes down. I hope they have a transition plan if that's the case.

bane2• 13 years ago

I'm surprised some other personal broadcast approach hasn't replaced it by now.

Lots of great online radio (and formerly video) was Shoutcast.

taopao2• 13 years ago

I think it was like Reader, where the service was so good and ubiquitous that nobody felt compelled to make a replacement.

This will affect a lot more people than the Reader shutdown, and in a way that hits the pocketbook for those that have devices that depend on Shoutcast like my Yamaha receiver. I wonder if the outcry will be as strong?

redblacktree• 13 years ago

I guess the Llama's ass now gets a break.

glennos• 13 years ago

Rumour has it that PETA forced the shutdown.

corford• 13 years ago

People laugh at me for still using winamp but I love it. It's fast, low memory, never crashes and the ui hasn't significantly changed for well over a decade.

More than that, it's one of the few pieces of software I still use every day that can provide an anchor all the way back to my mid-teens when I was first getting seriously involved with computers.

Its death sort of marks an end of an era for me :'(

zamalek• 13 years ago

few pieces of software I still use every day that can provide an anchor all the way back to my mid-teens

Same here :(. I pirated it for so many years and it was the first license that I purchased after being able to afford it (after getting a job).

I would really like to know why :(. Winamp is one of the very few companies that I feel deserves many more pennies than they asked for.

ZeWaren2• 13 years ago

Same here.

bane2• 13 years ago

If there was ever an example of how to acquire a technology you don't know what to do with and then sit on it till it's dead, the Winamp story is it (and I guess Sonique as well).

Made a couple people rich (well deserved) at least.

bhaile• 13 years ago

Memories of napster/kazaa coming back from reading this. Best MP3 player. Fast, skinnable with ease, supported ID3 tags, one of the first with visualizations (cool feature but didn't use it much)

VLC is the same for me for video. Fast and plays almost all formats plus its open source. Winamp should have been open source to further its usage and development.

jaysonelliot• 13 years ago

I just switched back to Winamp after getting fed up with the latest release of iTunes.

At least it's a real application that I can download and own for myself, and doesn't stop working just because it's no longer being supported.

This is a great example of why I don't move all my data to the cloud, or use browser-based apps for things that matter to me.

Hopefully they'll release the codebase to the world.

caycep• 13 years ago

Why winamp? my understanding is that it's long been surpassed by other apps, i.e. foobar, even VLC

tracker12• 13 years ago

foobar is a bit... bare bones imho... and neither it or VLC have the shoutcast stream listing services... which will be an issue without winamp. :-(

codingdave• 13 years ago

I have used it for all these years because it "just works". I have 2 needs in a music player - play whatever I have locally, and stream me something different when I want to. Winamp did both of those, and I never had an issue with it.

It is hard to "surpass" something that meets my needs perfectly and has given me no issues for over 10 years.

jay_m2• 13 years ago

The main reason I use Winamp is because it has global keyboard shortcuts for controlling playback. I'm not sure if any other media players have that, if anyone knows of one that does I would love to know.

amag• 13 years ago

In my experience VLC eats a lot more CPU for just playing the same songs. While I like VLC for movie-files, Winamp is nicer when it comes to music.

Zoomla• 13 years ago

VLC can do many neat things but you can you easily rate an MP3 file nowadays?

prg3182• 13 years ago

Because it really whips the llama's ass.

ArcticCelt• 13 years ago

Foobar is OK but because it tries to give so many power user options it can become a pain to do simple things like play list management.

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

Because Winamp.

gohrt• 13 years ago

foobar still can't do sound level balancing (ReplayGain) properly. Does winamp?

shellehs• 13 years ago

I think it's just for good-old-day's memory. Just like Super Mario.

marrs• 13 years ago

Try running obscure file formats, like chiptune. Winamp reliably supports all of these with a very low barrier to entry.

surement• 13 years ago

MilkDrop

rm999• 13 years ago

This is a great example of why I don't move all my data to the cloud

Music is a great use-case for keeping data in the cloud. You can have a consistent music library and can use any player client-side. Personally I prefer the spotify "all-you-can-listen" model, but I have a bunch of MP3s that aren't on spotify that I seamlessly stream from dropbox (either to winamp or the spotify client, which allows you to sync local files).

piyush_soni4• 13 years ago

Music is a great use-case for keeping data in the cloud.

Yes, but ideally, when it's your cloud. Just because all these major cloud players can just stop their service on their whim.

mathieuh• 13 years ago

I think they complement each other rather than directly compete with each other. I have all my files stored locally, but I also have them all uploaded to Google Music so I can listen to them on my phone. Even if Google Music shuts down, I have local copies.

momerath• 13 years ago

For those who are shaking their heads at the idea of their collection fitting on dropbox, or listening to single tracks of whatever is on Spotify, I recommend Subsonic. I stream my whole collection from my home connection to my phone.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

smrtinsert• 13 years ago

There is so much lost when moving to the cloud.

Off the top of my head: You tie your data to one provider instead of simply physical media, you lose discoverability (will your kids browse your album choices 30 years from now?), exporting/importing quality is at the mercy of the provider (for example Amazon dropped several dozen mp3s when I migrated a few gigs to Google), and of course you place your data at the mercy of a business, (is any tech company eternal and/or always interested in providing cloud services?)

The cloud is way overdone, after giving a variety of services a go over the last few years, I'm actually pulling back.

Dirlewanger• 13 years ago

No thanks to the cloud regarding my music. Even though I use the crap out of Google Music, it sucks at keeping track of diffs between locally and the cloud. I change album art and other metadata all the time. Real pain in the pass. And then there's always the case of where one won't have Internet access, especially when driving.

goldenkey2• 13 years ago

Can we just say online instead of 'the cloud'? That's what you mean, does it matter if it's only a single server or a virtualized XEN cluster? No.

altero3• 13 years ago

Music is a great use-case for keeping data in the cloud

Since when? For start it drains battery much faster. Oh and you know, it does not work offline!

hipaulshi• 13 years ago

I strongly agree with this comment. I still wish there is an easy solution for hosting all my music in different original format without a high cost, but also playable through a cloud player. Music is something that I need it constantly but don't really mind if it is lost in a few years. I used to run Subsonic on beagleboard but it barely keeps up with converting flac to mp3 at stream time. I am looking at http://meetlima.com/ but I don't think that is what I want. iTune integration will become a huge issue unless it pops up as a Shared music.

cenhyperion• 13 years ago

I'm somewhere in between. I stream my music from a server that I own and control. Virtually unlimited storage + full control of the data = :)

davexunit• 13 years ago

No reason to use a proprietary music player.

recursive2• 13 years ago

One would be to play music.

csmuk8• 13 years ago

Every music player is proprietary somewhere be it codec, physical IC, transistor technology, speakers, headphones.

Software is a teeny little bit of the whole thing.

Nursie• 13 years ago

Apparently VLC does the shoutcast stuff now if you download a pls file from shoutcast.com and feed it to VLC.

If you're a linux user then 'audacious' is a good/similar replacement to winamp IMHO.

I switched to using quodlibet some time ago. Can't remember why (simplicity, the right views, stuff) but now everything else seems sucky.

vomitcuddle5• 13 years ago

deadbeef is a very nice lesser-known linux music player that's heavily influenced by foobar2000. quodlibet is probably my second favourite, but it's written in python, so it can be a bit slow/heavy on resources at times. banshee is great for large libraries and as an iTunes replacement.

prawks• 13 years ago

I switched to quodlibet for the fast indexing and searching of large libraries. I'm sure other media library managers do that too, but it seems to be very nice in quod.

dell1994• 13 years ago

You can install Tonido (http://www.tonido.com) in your desktop and listen to your music from anywhere (iOS, Android, Windows 8). Your data, music and app is all local to system but still can access from anywhere as cloud.

PhasmaFelis• 13 years ago

This is part of why I prefer cloud services like Dropbox that also maintain local copies and simply use the cloud for syncing and backups. Best of both worlds, that way.

scrabble• 13 years ago

I also recently switched back to Winamp. It just works and it's easy to control.

There's also a plugin called Chipamp which ensures you have all the latest plugins required to play video game music files (nsf, rsn, usf, psf, etc.). This is the best PC tool for listening to video game music.

etler2• 13 years ago

At least with winamp, there weren't really any major changes since Justin Frankel left, and what made it amazing back then is still in the program now.

fat0wl2• 13 years ago

Foobar2000 is also pretty stable and awesome -- just need to drop in the Facets component & it's a dream. Winamp is a nice memory from back in the Napster days tho. :)

davidgerard• 13 years ago

VLC?

BlackDeath3• 13 years ago

No kidding. I used to use it all the time, and I just re-downloaded about a week ago as my player of choice, especially since it's capable of playing FLACs (looking at you, WMP).

niels_olson• 13 years ago

you should check out subsonic

http://subsonic.org/

I like the isub app for iphone, but there are android apps too: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/apps.jsp

I find subsonic works best with a friend or two participating. A miniature music club if you will.

If you already have a large library, you can use beets to organize it in a separate database (this is our current project) http://beets.radbox.org/

Toenex2• 13 years ago

As Linux user forced to use OSX at work I've settled on VOX [http://coppertino.com/vox/] as suitable player for OSX.

danbee• 13 years ago

Vox is nice but completely useless to me until it gets gapless playback.

el_duderino• 13 years ago

AIMP is Winamp's successor.

s7an4o• 13 years ago

say hi to foobar

rossover• 13 years ago

Holy shit, Winamp is still around!?

tracker12• 13 years ago

This sucks... winamp has been my go to media player, along with shoutcast services forever and a day... Their android player is imho one of the best ones available at that.

I honestly haven't been into any of the skin options since version 5.. but the player has been awesome. This is really a shame.

yashg2• 13 years ago

Sad! It really whipped the Llama's ass! It is still my music player on PC. I have saved the installer.

rahuldracula• 13 years ago

Best music player with all the customizations I need and manages all the external devices very well. Quite a shame that it has to shut down. Another disappointment but not as large as Google reader, I will still be using my winamp.

taylorbuley• 13 years ago

With HTML like this, I can see perhaps why folks aren't tuning in as much https://gist.github.com/editor/ed6339a732d6c7c06dd3

Tiktaalik• 13 years ago

First thing I do when setting up a fresh PC is installing Winamp 2.95. It's the perfect mp3 player for the simple use case of just dragging some files onto a window and hitting play.

rob-alarcon• 13 years ago

If anyone is looking for a replacement of Winamp, I highly recommend AIMP, I have been using it for about two years now.

http://www.aimp.ru/

holms3• 13 years ago

sorry but AIMP UI design is worse than XMMP player 5 years ago!

sgarlatm• 13 years ago

I believe AOL owns Winamp now. I hope they open source the code!

ConceptJunkie• 13 years ago

AOL used to do some cool open-source stuff back in the 2000s. At the time, a lot of their tech was based on AOLServer which was an web server they acquired in the 90s and open-sourced. AOLServer is also tightly coupled with Tcl and AOL used to contribute to Tcl development as well.

Alas, I doubt anyone involved in open-sourcing anything is still there.

dragonfax• 13 years ago

I guess the Llama got sick of its ass being whipped.:/

Link-• 13 years ago

Nooo... This is a bad, bad day! It would really interesting to learn more about this company and how it survived for 15 years in a very competitive market.

muppetman2• 13 years ago

I wonder if this is a hoax/website hack? There's no mention of it anywhere else apart from this particular URL. No mention on Twitter, no talk of it in the forums etc. They only just updated the Winamp Android Client.

I doubt it, but the odd HTML in the title and lack of any other information makes me doubt it's authenticity.

muppetman2• 13 years ago

No, it's official. DJ Egg has posted as much in the forums. Wow. RIP Winamp.

jredwards• 13 years ago

That's a shame. Winamp is still my music player of choice when I'm not using a streaming service. I've always appreciated the design that allows me to minimize it to a thin bar and leave it on top in a way that's unobtrusive. Has anyone else copied that design?

iTunes and Windows Media Player are both monstrosities, and while I appreciate VLC for playing video, I've never been inclined to use it as a music player.

piyush_soni4• 13 years ago

Just for those who are looking for a replacement player on Windows Desktop. I have been using JetAudio player, and have been very happy with it. It supports global keyboard shortcuts (VERY important for me), CD ripping, playlists with live monitoring and what not. And one of the biggest reasons I moved to it from Winamp was that it could handle the 4500 something songs I had on my machine in one playlist, without getting laggy. Winamp would just crawl with those many songs.

desireco42• 13 years ago

It was great while it lasted. I am sorry to see them shut down, but I understand.

threeio• 13 years ago

This makes me sad.

Mikeb85• 13 years ago

I prefer Clementine, Amarok, and Rhythmbox. No point using a proprietary app when there's plenty of open-source apps which are just as good if not better...

zanny• 13 years ago

As someone who adores Clementine, using it all the time, and as someone who has contributed patches (both bug and feature) to it, it isn't lean. My instance right now (running for over a week straight, playing music most of the time, I have around a dozen playlists open, and I have it auto download a half dozen podcasts) has 122M of resident memory usage, and 85 minutes of execution time on an i7 at 4.5ghz.

A really lean music player wouldn't use more than a dozen MB of resident memory (after whatever libraries need loaded, but since i run KDE Clementine isn't bearing the blunt of Qt loading) but Clementine intentionally caches a lot of information to make the UI lag less and make transitions seamless.

ChrisNorstrom• 13 years ago

"It really whips the lama's ass" What an era.

Winamp's goodbye might go in a similar fashion to Sonique's. Slowly and quietly. Sonique was a music player that was bought for about $20 million by Lycos (back in the dot com bubble days) and then shut down after it plateau'd in development and execs realized "dude, it's just a media player". It had a huge community (but no where near as big as Winamp's) and literally a TON (hundreds and hundreds of pages) of really amazing skins and visualization plugins. The site was shut down without much notice.

You can still download the lastest stable versions of Sonique on a fan site and it'll still work. I have a feeling that's how Winamp will be. Unless the developers release the source code.

evanmoran• 13 years ago

The magic moment was when we all realized, pretty much simultaneously, that CDs and radio were obsolete. And this wasn't from some iterative Moore's Law like growth in hard drive size, it was sudden algorithmic brilliance that allowed music to be compressed small enough to be easily downloaded and shared. Suddenly digital distribution seemed inevitable and obvious. We could listen to whole collections of songs very, very fast. Old bands became popular, and we would sit around for hours playing song after amazing song for our friends. Winamp was the app that made it possible. The skins let us change its look to fit us better, and its music visualizations were an awesome backdrop for parties. A great app and a great time.

We live in the future.

VLM• 13 years ago

"And this wasn't from some iterative Moore's Law"

It was WRT CPU power. I remember having to use some specially compiled for 486 player to just barely be able to play mp3s. Before that on my 386-40 I was below real time.

I'm pretty sure this is what I was using:

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/mpg123-oss-i486

This was the days long before P2P, using binaries usenet groups. Or ripping songs yourself, which took quite a long time indeed (like 10 or 15 minutes per song?)

72deluxe3• 13 years ago

Haha ah yes, I remember being amazed by a friend who could convert WAVs to MP3s faster than ripping the CD to WAV. Good times. I remember a base Pentium 90 laptop struggling to play MP3s in Winamp, not massively high bitrate either. I could just about play MP3s on a 486 DX2 66Mhz (and discovered MODs etc. at that time too - smaller to download, using floppy disk and a school's internet access). I was amazed with Grip and its ability to rip and convert straight to MP3s, but it took forever. Good times using RH 6.2.

znowi• 13 years ago

Oh, memories. I've been using Winamp for at least 10 years. I still have a Netscape skin for the legacy version (came out with Netscape Navigator, I believe). Yes, Winamp was the audio player back then.

I switched to Winamp lite when they started adding "bloat" features like media library, video playback, etc. It plays music and it does it awesomely. It's likely I'll be using it for 10 more years.

meerita• 13 years ago

Trough WinAmp I discovered MP2. Then MP3. I even created an amazing skin for Winamp back in 2000, before they went with the scalable one. It was hellish popular back in the days, it was a Puma skin :)

kostyk• 13 years ago

end of an era

jweir• 13 years ago

Oh this takes me back... I redesigned WinAmp's website back in 2004 or 3 for Odopod in San Francisco. The wonderful Andre Adreev assisted (he now running http://www.dresscodeny.com/ ).

Here are some comps for those interested... http://smokinggun.com/projects/winamp/index.php?id=0

dannyrosen• 13 years ago

Great work, that takes me back.

mankypro• 13 years ago

noooooooooooooooooo.....

AndyKelley2• 13 years ago

This seems like a good time to plug my latest open source project: libgroove [1]

It's a cross-platform music player backend C library. It's meant to be generic enough to be the backend of any music player.

I use it as the backend for Groove Basin [2] which just might hit milestone 1.0.0 around December 20.

[1] https://github.com/superjoe30/libgroove [2]: https://github.com/superjoe30/groovebasin

Rauchg• 13 years ago

Groove Basin looks amazing!

endgame• 13 years ago

Nice interface, but what does groovebasin offer that mpd doesn't?

AndyKelley2• 13 years ago

I'll just name one: perfect replaygain. Meaning it uses the same code to decode and play audio as it does to scan and detect loudness. MPD does no replaygain scanning and only understands APEv2 tags. You have to manage replaygain scanning yourself, and if you have audio that does not support APEv2 tags you're shit out of luck. Groove Basin on the other hand does lazy multi-core replaygain scanning and everything it can play (which is everything that libav can decode (in other words anything that VLC can play)) it can scan. So you never run into that situation where you are listening to a quiet song, turn the volume up, and then a loud song blasts your ears off.

There are a bunch of other flaws in MPD's design which I've carefully fixed in the design of libgroove/groovebasin. I know because Groove Basin used to be an MPD client until I got stuck by all of the issues and then finally ripped out MPD and wrote my own backend to use instead.

I have a WIP blog article that goes into more detail about this stuff. This Winamp article might just be the kick in the pants I need to get it finished :)

taude• 13 years ago

Winamp + Napster reminds me of 1999.

talles• 13 years ago

Noooooooo.....

(tears)

Anyway, why are they shutting down?

gordaco• 13 years ago

I'm another long-time winamp user. I got stuck on 2.91, never needed to update since it worked perfectly. The biggest reason why I never switched to another player (aside from all of them having zero features that interested me) is that the plugin system was extremely easy to use and had a community of devoted developers. I can reproduce like 20 or so different formats that the "naked" winamp cannot (mostly console chiptunes, like .vgm, .spc or .psf). I know that other players support those plugins, but for me, there's simply no need to switch. There's nothing I miss.

I strongly associate winamp with the early days of P2P, when I was just a teen and got fascinated by the possibility of, at last, getting (at 5k/s; way better than nothing) all those songs from a foreign music TV channel that never played in the local radios... and using Winamp to play them. But it's not just nostalgia: what makes Winamp such a great piece of software is that I still use it every day and it doesn't show its age.

bemmu• 13 years ago

There was something magical about spending forever downloading an MP3 with a modem, then playing it at 22kHZ because computer was not fast enough to run Winamp at full quality :-)

Now I have every song I could possibly want to listen to in Spotify, which is magical in another way.

tzury2• 13 years ago

Show me 1 product/service/platform that got acquired by AOL and got better/bigger at there.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL

nandhp2• 13 years ago

Well, MapQuest probably isn't worse (although obviously it has been overtaken by Google Maps in popularity). MapQuest Open ( http://open.mapquest.com/ ) is actually a pretty good interface to OpenStreetMap; it does search, directions, and a good job of tile rendering.

tzury2• 13 years ago

Show me one product/service/platform that got acquired by AOL and got better/bigger at there.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL

fhd2• 13 years ago

I'd say Mozilla/Firefox somewhat counts. They acquired Netscape around 1998, and although they eventually ran Netscape itself into the ground AOL-style, they allowed the devs to work on Mozilla for quite some time. Long enough so they could create what would become the foundation of Firefox (Gecko and XUL, most notably).

NamTaf• 13 years ago

Mirabilis, with ICQ? I don't remember when it peaked but it certainly was huge. I was using it heavily around 2000-2003.

nvr219• 13 years ago

Shift+V for fadeout for life.

tsumnia2• 13 years ago

There are ultimately two types of people in the comments right now: those that will miss Winamp and those laughing it was still around.

Winamp worked. It played all your MP3s without any of the other fluff. It played your music in a very lightweight program. What was also nice was this was before every program auto-updated; so you'd manually have to go update it; except, the newer versions were adding features, not fixing bugs. If you thought Winamp was fine, there was never a need to upgrade. I remember never upgrading Winamp until way into my college years.

People have mentioned it, but I didn't change to foobar because I always used Winamp. Even when they made the modern UI, you could (and can) still go Classic. Computer space and performance weren't issues because the extra bells and whistles are easy to never use.

Only a few weeks ago did I make the move from Winamp to foobar; and it was only to see the difference. Initial thoughts are I don't like how it displays my music; but I do like the shuffle since its playing songs I never hear.

V-22• 13 years ago

It was really long ago when Winamp was still lightweight :)

lotsofpulp• 13 years ago

The Lite version is still lightweight.

Ruud-v-A2• 13 years ago

I recently updated Winamp to 6.65, and it removed the ‘play tracks similar to …’ feature. That is the only difference I noticed.

badman_ting2• 13 years ago

It worked for playing MP3s, but once you had a collection of a certain size it didn't do a very good job of managing that collection, at least at the time I stopped using it. You'd double-click an MP3 or a playlist and it would completely forget about everything that was in there before. I got so sick of that.

bartl• 13 years ago

You can change that with a setting in the preferences.

tsumnia2• 13 years ago

I won't lie, this was probably the only annoyance I had with Winamp; however, years ago, I just decided Winamp was the 'everything' playlist on shuffle and if I ever had a hankering for a specific song, I'd use VLC. If I ever accidentally did it in Winamp, it was just a simple 'Add Folder' click away. I still feel that issue wasn't a complete deal breaker though. Everything else ran swimmingly.

greg5green• 13 years ago

It's been almost 10 years since I've used a new version of Winamp, but I really have to disagree with you about performance. When they started adding features it immediately started to suck performance wise. Had to go back to v2.whatever because of it. At the time I was on a top of the line or near top of the line Northwood system. v5 was a little better than v3, but it was full of ads at every corner if I remember correctly.

ilitirit• 13 years ago

I used both, but in the end I just stick with Winamp because all I really care about is listening to music. It's really no big deal for me to find a playlist with Everything (or even just navigate there with Windows Explorer) and double click it. I suppose Winamp just fits in better with my workflow.

trumbitta2• 13 years ago

Winamp! It really whips the llama's ass! :-(

kosei• 13 years ago

One of my favorite slogans ever.

brosco45• 13 years ago

AOL money down the drain

smurph• 13 years ago

I actually really like the Zune music player that you could (still can?) download from Microsoft. I never even owned a Zune, but the player software is a lightweight WMP with better design. Sure the Zune Marketplace/pass links were all there, but they are easy enough to ignore.

archQuestions• 13 years ago

And the llama may finally rest in peace.

dcustodio• 13 years ago

I really liked the windamp android player, specially because it had lastfm integration. sad news.

nashashmi• 13 years ago

I hate AOL. They buy things and shut it down without much thought. I still remember Goowy, a flash based desktop and OS with the early concept of having Apps. Imagine if it were still there, you would have flash-based tablet.

But there is one victory from AOL, the spinoff off Mozilla. You would think they could do the same with Winamp

MrBra4• 13 years ago

Thanks for the memories, I will never stop using Winamp in my mind. I have so many memories tied to it. It was crazy you had to download it to play those surreal .mp3 files. Then it was my patient assistant when I had to make my first (teen) love compilation! I also used to show people how many beatiful skins it had. And what about when lyrics plugins came out and no no other players could do it. And what about breath taking, stunning visualizations plugins when WMP would just show you those low resolution ugly bricks? (has this last point got any better?) Thanks Justin for all you did!

shmerl• 13 years ago

Winamp? I used it years ago. I use VLC and mplayer for quite a while already.

schappim• 13 years ago

It turns out that the lama came back and whooped it's arse.

wil421• 13 years ago

Winamp has a special place in my heart it was the first music app that I really like when I was in my teens.

I remember downloading a song in 15 minutes off Napster when my family first got an ISDN line. Oh man 10-15kbs was screaming.

jotm• 13 years ago

Well, shit. It's still the best music player for Windows, even after a decade. I haven't updated it for over a year, though, so I guess the latest version will have to do for the next decade :-)

tomrod• 13 years ago

Ah, the good old days of winamp are coming to an end.

I'll miss the old days of 1999, using winamp to play my latest Napster "acquisitions".

For myself, I generally just use mplayer or music-on-console (moc) nowadays. It gets the job done with no fuss and no mess.

themodelplumber3• 13 years ago

Just got it running with the D-Reliction skin using Wine in Ubuntu. Then the first song it picks on shuffle is all, "numa numa yey"...haha, man, I'll bet they've had so many downloads today. lol

nekopa• 13 years ago

Which version? I installed v2.95, but the library doesn't seem to work.

themodelplumber3• 13 years ago

I ended up seeing a lot of glitches too, to the point where the player buttons stopped responding. I might still run it in a Windows VM. The lite version seems OK though.

mavroprovato• 13 years ago

That version did not include a library manager.

tadruj• 13 years ago

Sad. Years ago I found WinAmp and its programmable visualizer an indispensable tool when teaching Mathematics. Graphing sine waves is so much fun when combined with a good beat.

gorbachev• 13 years ago

Internet history dieing.

Jagat2• 13 years ago

I still use winamp. I have been a faithful user of winamp for the last 12 years. Everything else seems very bloated and try to do too many things at once.

yankoff• 13 years ago

Why shutting down and not open-source?

soheilpro• 13 years ago

This makes me really sad. I learned to code while listening to music using Winamp.

christogreeff• 13 years ago

Started using Winamp 1.90 in 1998. Don't think I've ever played MP3s in any other application since. :(

antr• 13 years ago

    "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass!"

My favourite mp3 player during internet 1.0. Good times.

AbraKdabra• 13 years ago

I use Winamp since version 2 when it was released in 1998 (I was 8) I think, my dad started using it and I still use it everyday, nothing can be compared to it, the simplicity of use it's just insuperable, it's the best music player out there and I'll continue using it. I tried AIMP, Foobar in Windows but the just don't... and in Linux the only thing comparable is Audacious but of course it lacks all the development that Winamp carries from all its years, it's a sad day, AOL was the worst thing that could happen to this great piece of software.

croisillon• 13 years ago

Why Go Pro? Help fund continued product development & innovation

Well... no more...

rschmitty2• 13 years ago

Charging a 1 time fee probably wasn't the best idea for life-time support.

Perhaps AOL hoped they would have their own itunes and it would self support the player development

SchizoDuckie• 13 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/Y9Y4yZI.jpg You will be missed!

jksmith• 13 years ago

Sad news. Always loved using winamp. Really did "kick the llama's ass."

mratzloff• 13 years ago

Winamp was being shopped around recently.

Either they didn't end up finding a buyer or they did and the buyer is taking the tech private (cheaper than staffing a product and paying for bandwidth costs). I'm guessing it is the latter.

orthecreedence• 13 years ago

God I hate Aol.

dpedu• 13 years ago

Aaaaand here's a clone of the Skin / Plugin section from the winamp website: http://winamp.dpedu.io/

Skins are coming soon, they're still scraping :)

bad_user• 13 years ago

The end of an era. I still have it installed, as on Windows there's still nothing better.

I remember switching to Linux and being frustrated by XMMS because it wasn't Winamp, although it tried to be.

PavlovsCat2• 13 years ago

I know it's lame to hijack topics with "yeah, but [something else but similar]" posts, but I am still sad that DeliPlayer isn't being developed anymore :(

http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/DeliPlayer

crimzonrayne• 13 years ago

You win this time llama's ass!!

mkhalil• 13 years ago

This is sad. I discovered so much music throughout my teenage life using WinAMP. I used to do shoutCast broadcast for friends and feel like a DJ. I used to be excited when a friend would allow me to replace their MusicMatch Jukebox with Winamp. It was solid, and worked. Why shutdown? :(

I supposed I've only been installing the <3.00 version anyway, so I can stick with it, but still...mixed emotions.

mehmehshoe• 13 years ago

I stopped using Windamp for a long time until I purchased my first Android phone. After looking through the dozens of Mp3 players on the market, I saw my old fave, downloaded it and have been using it ever since on my phone.

RIP Llama

panzi2• 13 years ago

Winamp is a great music player. It is still the best for some file formats. Via it's plugins it can play more exotic audio file formats than any other player. Some players support s3m and it, but play only half of some files: Winamp plays it all. There are great plugins for nsf, spc, psf and usf sound files (sound files form NES, SNES, PS1 and N64 games). I wish there would be a real alternative (for Linux). Does anyone know a good player for these file formats? Audacious is good for s3m, it and nsf, but spc, psf and usf?

tokenrove• 13 years ago

I like deadbeef, which uses libgme to play SPC, at least; haven't tried PSF or USF.

panzi2• 13 years ago

Wait, I just realized Audacious CAN play psf and spc (forgot about that). The only thing I'm missing is (mini)usf (Nintendo 64 music). Although the Winamp plugins are much more feature rich: more metadata, (live!) disabling and enabling of channels (instruments), custom song length configuration etc. That's why I still used Winamp for that.

beloch• 13 years ago

I remember using Winamp back in the day. At one point in time, it was the only mp3 player out there that didn't absolutely suck. It was pretty amazing how usenet and winamp opened up a whole world of music you just couldn't buy anywhere at the time. Truly a leap forwards in distribution! It's too bad the music industry reacted with such paranoia that they arguably still haven't adequately monetized it.

A couple of years ago I used OSX for about 6 months. One of the more minor reasons I was relieved to uninstall it was that I never found a music player I really liked. Let's face it, iTunes is crap even on the OS it was meant for!

On Windows, look no further than Foobar2000. It's not a super-sexy looking player (although it can be if you put some work into it), but it is eminently functional. It does practically anything you can want (with extensions), has an easy to figure out but powerful interface, and is audiophile-grade. This lives on my HTPC, which interfaces with my stereo, so it's what I'm primarily used to. Love it! There's one extension (foo_httpcontrol) you can add that allows you to control your stereo from any networked device (there are a few android apps designed to work through this interface), which is handy for flipping through music while reading in your comfy chair or sitting on the porcelain throne!

On Linux, Amarok. Sexier apps come and are abandoned to become bug-infested swamps of suck, but Amarok has been going strong for a very long time. I often try newer music apps, but Amarok is the default on KDE for a reason.

Segmentation2• 13 years ago

I'm surprised you recommend Amarok as a foobar2k user. Amarok is closer to iTunes than it is foobar2k.

Linux users: look for Audacious or DeaDBeeF. They are the best Linux alternatives to foobar2k.

msturm• 13 years ago

XMPlay has to be mentioned here! Great player in not even 400 kB, but unfortunately Windows only.

http://support.xmplay.com/

orng• 13 years ago

I second this. So tiny, yet with such great sound quality.

wpnx• 13 years ago

It really kicked the llama's ass.

snambi• 13 years ago

Its a great app. Sad they are shutting down.

Nux• 13 years ago

Dear Winamp, thank you for XMMS. Adios!

kepano• 13 years ago

Before I knew the word “UI” even existed, I loved making skins for Winamp and various other applications (my 2004 skin, Impulse[1], still shows up on their site). It was a fun, approachable way to create functional pieces of art, and in retrospect taught me a lot about creating a product from start to finish. It was exciting to make something in my bedroom that hundreds of thousands of people around the world would use.

Saddest to me, is that I can’t think of today’s equivalent, a widespread and useful app that encourages its users to tinker and easily modify the interface.

[1] http://www.winamp.com/skin/impulse/142212

mikejsiegel• 13 years ago

Perhaps Tumblr to a certain degree? I've met some young front-end guys that cut their teeth making Tumblr themes. I suppose what you can modify with Tumblr Themes is more limited than winamp skins.

holms3• 13 years ago

I don't know about you guys, but I've this news just ended my teenage years =( I've used winamp to store my 2TB music collection for like 10 years. yeah back then to get 2TB from 120gb hdd's was something big, but anyway, even after dragging and dropping the whole 2TB directory into winamp, it processed track by track, without destroying my ram, and my CPU. I've had a zillions (Around 10gb, it's 1-2kb per song) of modular music from: atari, c64, nds, n64, sega, ps1,2,3 and etc and etc. All of these was supported by winamp plugins. This was working perfectly, sorted in my winamp by categories/genres and various other methods. I've been really enjoying this player for all my geeky life. And now it's going way =( They could at least release and opensource. That classical design is masterpiece, I don't know any player you can beat winamp's design, unless it's xmms player in linux, which is probably also dead for a long long time. Although I'm currently residing on OSX, and I'm using iTunes to sort all my stuff, it's still not so great as Winamp. All I need is proper music indexer, and all possible music format support. What could be better is having transcoding software together with this cute player, and I'd be happy till the end of my life lol. Now I have to use only ALAC instead of FLAC, and ofcourse mp3. For converter I'm using XLD, for video VLC or mplayerx, for converting videos Handbrake. C'mon Winamp was universal tool! I belive some plugins could provide transcoding.

LET'S CRAWL WINAMP SIDE AND SAVE A HISTORY OF GREAT SOFTWARE.

Lol i think this should be in computer museum or something =/

Winamp, I'll miss you so much, I know that "justin can't code it" sometimes, but I still love all your team, your product, your efforts, Thanks for being with us with our teenhood!!!

P.s and what about winamp shoutcast? this was only ultimate radio solution in the whole web!!

holms3• 13 years ago

Please sign a petition to opensource a winamp! https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/attention-aol-let-win...

smegel• 13 years ago

For those looking for a lightweight alternative, I recently switched to GOM Music Player on Windows. No library (yet), but a nice modern GUI and good Context Menu integration.

conradfr• 13 years ago

I still use it everyday, never changed player since its first release. I guess it's the piece of software I have used for the longest time now (for free!) ?

It just works for me. Controls in the systray (deal breaker for me with other players), brillant mix of media library and playlists, the Bento skin is very decent etc.

Once in a while a shoutcast radio or a trippy Milkdrop session.

I get that people use Spotify now. I'm not in the cloud yet but I see the appeal.

ZeWaren2• 13 years ago

Someone should create a Winamp 2 theme for FooBar now.

lsc• 13 years ago

Huh. Has anyone offered AOL some cash for Winamp? it isn't like it'd be expensive to maintain, if AOL was willing to part with it for reasonable money.

Is there a reason why they'd want to shut down the company rather than selling it for cheap?

Segmentation2• 13 years ago

Thank you Winamp for the good times.

I wouldn't call it an end of an era though, I feel like Winamp's era ended several years ago.

Now the only program Windows users still use in this day of age that I can't understand is shareware WinRAR. Seriously. (Who hasn't been using 7-Zip for years?)

ParadisoShlee• 13 years ago

Give Mediamonkey a try.. syncs with iPods too

MrBra4• 13 years ago

And this is not gonna top up on 4chan. This is why I like it better here.

mikefromit• 13 years ago

I remember having to rip cds to wav files on my x4 CD burner (the fastest at the time) and then using winamp to convert them to mp3 before winamp had the add-in that did it all in one step.

mattbee• 13 years ago

In their dog days they are now giving away the pro version of Winamp, which does CD ripping, removes ads and has a few other features. i.e. the link to the Free version is now the Pro version.

I was another pretty recent convert to Winamp after using it in the 90s then switching to Linux, but it still does the job _fast_ if you still keep a big hard drive of MP3s.

rietta• 13 years ago

Why do they not open source the entire package? I have to think that AOL has clean intellectual property ownership on the code base. It would be better than letting this important historical codebase slip into oblivion.

mindotus• 13 years ago

Sad to see Winamp go and hopefully AOL won't do the same with Shoutcast. Would be nice to see AOL update the Shoutcast app more.

x0n• 13 years ago

I blame the llamas.

founder4fun• 13 years ago

I use to use winamp to fill my house with audio. I had a few PCs throughout the house and had set up my own radio station. I would hit play on one of the PCs and all the computers would start playing throughout my home. I could even access and control my broadcast outside my home.

Back then I had a ton of curiosity but development skills. Tinkering as did with Winamp and other programs like edonkey and Bit torrent compelled me to create and then learn how to turn my web ideas into reality.

Thanks Winamp for helping me get going!

iscrewyou• 13 years ago

http://www.sheepfriends.com/index-page=billy.html

This was my go to music player before I moved over to Play Music and then Spotify.

WD-42• 13 years ago

"It really whips the llama's ass" was a reference to the late, great Wesely Willis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JntDcqOxMsM

chjohnst• 13 years ago

Wow I feel like I am leaving a piece of my childhood behind. Long live winamp haha

potomushto• 13 years ago

Writing simple Winamp Plugin was my first C++ experience about 10 years ago and it was amazing.

stevewillows• 13 years ago

Peter Pawlowski's work on Foobar2000 is / was great. Winamp did the trick, but after 2.95 it lost me.

That said, it's sad to see the name go.

g8oz2• 13 years ago

They brought MP3s to the masses. RIP.

ismail• 13 years ago

Ah, fond memories of downloading MP3's via irc DCC :)

garthdog• 13 years ago

Winamp.com and associated web services

Associated web services sounds a lot like Shoutcast.

AOL wants to double down on stupid journalism. Winamp is a distraction.

yeukhon• 13 years ago

Winamp was very popular back in the days. When I was in 6, 7th grade I would use it every day! Sad to see this going down.

Fuxy• 13 years ago

I'm so bummed about this.

It's my favorite media player.

It was the first media player in its day that payed every file you threw at it.

It has never disappointed me since.

I really wish the owner would opensource it though if he doesn't have the time to maintain it I'm sure there's hundreds of thousands of people who will.

fetbaffe• 13 years ago

This is a sad day in computer history. Winamp was my first default music player and first true love of a computer program. It was in the end of the 1990s and ICQ ruled internet chatting and mp3s was new thing.

I used Winamp everyday. We shared music from dorm to dorm on the campus network. Everyone had Winamp. Parties had a dedicated Winamp computer with all the playlists with music available from the campus network.

We searched the net with Phoenix (now called Firefox) or Opera to find all the album art work. We installed beautiful Winamp skins and was amazed at audio 3d-visualization plugins that Winamp offered.

Winamp was early on handling multiple audio cards. I had dual audio cards, one just for Winamp connected to my HiFi equipment and the other for the rest of the Windows sounds connected to the computer table speakers.

Early with global hotkey support. Plugins that showed GUI popups of the music playing. Fraunhofer codec support. And it was super fast.

And I still remember the uproar when Winamp 3 was released. True fanboys stayed with the Winamp 2 release for many years, the classic.

Sad this has to end, but Winamp never successfully adopted to a world with full fledged media library players like iTunes or Windows Media Player. Back in the day we used Windows Explorer (or Norton Commander) to cataloged all our music and soon a community based naming standard convention of music was "created" by mutual agreement.

And then came music streaming.

Bye Winamp!

// A pro license owner

q_no• 13 years ago

this is a sad day! I've been using it since 1999. :(

Springtime• 13 years ago

This will likely be buried beneath the upvoted comments, but does anyone know if there's a backup of the entire skins and plugins database?

Would be a tragedy to lose all the brilliant work that's been created over the years, even if I don't use Winamp anymore.

rolfk2• 13 years ago

Winamp proved that offer sensible playlist management and multi-format support and you can't go wrong. I only wonder two things: why Winamp wasn't bagged by the big players earlier, and why the other players (i've only tried the free/freemium warez) still don't get it.

lepunk• 13 years ago

great example of how unimaginative AOL is. winamp has (had) a massive user base. it would have been a great base to start a spotify competitor with.

josefresco• 13 years ago

Anyone here old enough to remember Sonique? Back in the late 90's skinning your MP3 player was the bees knees. I remember having debates about Winamp plugins, flame wars about the direction of the software ... the good ol' days. iTune sucks.

mathiasben• 13 years ago

My favorite winamp plugin was Punkie. it was a visualization that had seemingly endless randomness to it. and file was only 72K and it managed to look incredible on even the lowliest video cards and resolutions.

smtbsrn• 13 years ago

Winamp was my first mp3 player.

zerohm• 13 years ago

My progression over the last 15 years has gone Winamp, Foobar, MediaMonkey, itunes, Spotify. I keep itunes around just for CD ripping and ipod syncing, but I'd like to abandon it altogether.

nblavoie• 13 years ago

Audacious + Winamp Classic Skin = Winamp.

For the skin: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Winamp+Classic+Skin?c...

For the player: http://audacious-media-player.org/

Datsundere• 13 years ago

RIP the era of windows ricing.

mzs• 13 years ago

I had a 6500 and used SoundApp, it was scriptable, thanks Norman!

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~franke/SoundApp/

travelorg• 13 years ago

Isn't XMMS still around? That looks a hell of a lot like winamp. http://www.xmms.org/

nandhp2• 13 years ago

XMMS is obsolete; in particular, it uses GTK+1.2 which is no longer available in most Linux distributions. It was removed from Debian in 2008: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2007/07/msg00026.html

I don't know what the status of XMMS2 is, but it's a client-server model like MPD.

The GTK2 fork of XMMS, Beep Media Player, is reported by Wikipedia to be discontinued; the BMPx fork of BMP has also been removed Debian. Audacious is another Linux music player with Winamp skin support, it is actively maintained.

Perhaps somebody should do a Winamp2-compatible MPD client for nostalgia purposes.

xzombiedev• 13 years ago

Fifteen years ago, i was downloaded winamp. Now i'm use other SO, it's sad, but it's the end of many first music player, other example is sonique, downed in 2002.

jes5199• 13 years ago

What does it even mean to "shut down" a piece of download-and-run software?

bkeating• 13 years ago

WinAmp was dead to me a few months into AOL owning it. Long live Nullsoft & Justin!

rocky1138• 13 years ago

Just in case you're looking for winamp after the close date, you can find old versions of it on http://oldversion.com. My fave is 2.95.

willfiveash• 13 years ago

I loved the visualization plugins for Winamp. I remember throwing parties using Winamp to play the tunes and projecting the visualizations on a huge screen. So good!

Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

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