Winamp is still a thing? NOPE: It'll be silenced forever in December

The latest version of Winamp, released on Wednesday, will be the last, with the venerable media-playing software scheduled to all but vanish from the internet next month. "Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013," reads a notice posted to the Winamp website on Wednesday. " …

[Mtech25]

Well at least the llama will be happy

I used to use it quite a lot back in the day and still do occasionally so it will be missed.

[dan1980]

Re: Well at least the llama will be happy

I used it yesterday, in fact - v5.6.

I use 3 media players:

* Media Monkey v3 (v2 skin) - for my ripped CD collection (previously MM Jukebox, till Yahoo destroyed it)

* Winamp v5.6 ('classic' skin)for one-off audio files - voicemail messages, downloaded samples, etc...

* VLC for video

I love the exceptionally small, but function-dense, interface of the WA classic skin - perfect for what I use it for!

[Gav]

Re: Well at least the llama will be happy

"I love the exceptionally small, but function-dense, interface of the WA classic skin - perfect for what I use it for!"

That was half the problem I found about Winamp, although I used it lots. Its interface was total pants because it was so inconsistent and dense. If you were looking for a function you hadn't used before, or not for ages, it was was a nightmare to locate. Was it clicking those three pixels under the that button, or was it in a menu, three levels down under a sub-menu about something entirely unrelated? Who knows? Certainly not the help documentation.

You certainly got the impression that the functionality had been layered onto the interface in umpteen different updates, resulting in a incredibly powerful application with no sensible design. The entire menu system needed thrown out and re-designed from scratch to make any sense, but that never happened.

And that's before you even consider the madness of using a different skin, where everything was in an entirely different place and not documented at all.

[Wayland Sothcott 1]

Re: Well at least the llama will be happy

I use it every day to listen to live streams. The shoutcast streaming format is pretty good. It should be developed. There are Open Source versions of WinAmp. It's a classic.

[Vociferous]

Re: Well at least the llama will be happy

It would still be my media player of choice - if it hadn't become a bloatware admonster.

The only good media player now is Foobar2000.

[Jones]

Well that...

Really whips the Llamas ass...

[Ian 55]

And a lovely player it was

Until the bloat of Winamp3

[Adam 1]

Re: And a lovely player it was

3 was to 2.4 what iTunes is to, et, pretty much anything else.

[BillG]

Re: And a lovely player it was

> Until the bloat of Winamp3

That's why I still use Winamp 2.78. A lovely, efficient media player that uses oh so LITTLE cpu cycles.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: And a lovely player it was

Winamp 2 was a beast, but after they tried to sideload crap with the installers I went to media player classic (As I hadn't really thought to go back to WinAmp 2, might grab a copy from oldversions.com later).

Kind of odd how ISP's buy up freeware then realise they can't make money from them (I used to use Sonique which was brought by Lycos and left to rot).

[Nicole D.]

Re: And a lovely player it was

"...but after they tried to sideload crap with the installers..."

That was my experience too. I went years without updating it because of the stuff it (AOL) insisted on installing. A few years ago I found that was no longer the case, or that it was easily bypassable (I forget which) and went to far as to buy Winamp Pro so I could rip to mp3, or was it FLAC... one or both of those, or something else that I wanted, was only available with Pro. I use it all the time, every day, it's my audio player and library manager of choice. So this is sad news.

But not surprising. It's been chaos over at Nullsoft for a long time. An email exchange I had recently with one of its programmers about a dodgy feature implementation and a suggested enhancement left me with the impression that there was really no direction to how the thing was being developed. Ad hoc and free form.

Just downloaded the latest version. It should suffice for for some time. Have no idea what I'd move to next.

[Piro]

Re: And a lovely player it was

2.78 is what I used for the longest time too, I'm sure. That's not the last 2 version, but it's the last good version overall.

It was excellent. But then that's a problem for AOL. How can you make money out of people who want to keep using an ancient version of Winamp?

[Florence]

Re: And a lovely player it was

I used a 2.7x version for a long time too, before switching to foobar2k (and now Clementine after migrating from XP last year).

I installed Winamp 5 x? a few years back and it really wasn't that bad - certainly better than v3 when it first appeared! But the main reason was to be able to use the soundspectrum visualisation plugins, and foobar2000 remained my default player.

The video playing capabilities always seemed like silly bloat. I don't think I ever knew anyone who used Winamp to watch video files.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And a lovely player it was

that uses oh so LITTLE cpu cycles.

FEW..

/grammar nazi

[Danny 14]

Re: And a lovely player it was

cpu cycles are just 1's and 0's so they are little.

[Anomalous Cowturd]

Re: And a lovely player it was

It was my Windows Media player of choice, until I switched to the dark side, about seven or eight years ago, and I have to admit that Rhythmbox still does it, despite being deprecated by Umbongo since about 10.10 or so.

Some of the visualisations were pretty cool though. Almost as good as Solarwinds screensaver.

[Oh Homer]

Re: And a lovely player it was

I usually don't have anything good to say about Windows or its apps, but on this occasion I have to tip my hat and mourn the passing of an absolute classic, indeed seminal piece of software.

Although the software I'm talking about actually died a long time ago, over fourteen years ago in fact, so mourning its passing now is a bit like mourning the passing of the real Napster long after it had been assimilated and commercialised.

Still, as iconic moments go, this is a sad one.

But weep not, intrepid Ampers, because you can still relive the classic Winamp experience vicariously through Audacious and QMMP.

[Cryo]

Re: And a lovely player it was

I skipped version 3 of Winamp, as it performed poorly and had some functionality issues. Thankfully, Nullsoft abandoned it as well, and the following year released Winamp 5 based off version 2's codebase, but with most of version 3's additions replicated. There's also since been a "Winamp Lite" released, that cuts out many of the side features added over the years.

As for the other bundled garbage that can get installed with it, that just requires going through a custom install to avoid those things getting added. That can be a bit more tedious, but it's not like you really need to reinstall Winamp frequently. Many people get along fine using versions of the software that are years old. Existing versions of Winamp will continue to function fine for many years to come, so I expect it to continue to be used for quite some time into the future, even if it is no longer actively developed.

[Tommy Pock]

I still use my old X10 Mini as my MP3 player, using Winamp (paid for) for its FLAC and gapless playback support. Pity.

[Phil W]

useful features

Winamp has some useful features, like being able to specify the audio device to use. Means my primary playback device in Windows can be my headphones while Winamp uses another output to play to my amp.

Windows Media Player certainly can't do that, not can any of the streaming services mentioned in the article.

VLC can but is hardly a suitable music library player.

Can anyone suggest a good free alternative to Winamp that can do the same thing?

[Justin Pasher]

Re: useful features

Check out foobar2000. I switched away from WinAmp a few years ago and I use foobar2000 for my light playback needs. It supports a lot of the features that people probably use in WinAmp and is much less bloated. It supports most (all?) of the common formats and few additional ones via the plug-in system (.MOD anyone?). I also use it for WAV > MP3 conversion (interface to lame.exe command line)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: useful features

NOOOOOOPE!

Where's my built-in shoutcast radio / TV ?

Where's my beautifull Tiny AVS visualisation programming language

Where are all those nice, opensourced, community skins, bordel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foobar is the Windows standard, isn't it?

The Audio standard, at least, for everybody except extreme audiophiles who's PC audio systems consist of multiple boxes connected by ridiculous Audioquest ethernet patch cables.

For what it's worth, I would have chosen to use VLC, multi-platform, for everything, except its developers never listen to classical music or live concert recordings, so they don't see anything wrong in inserting silent gaps between tracks --- a fatal fault that makes it absolute crap for audio.

Now, Linux based (but Windows-available too) I use Aqualung, because I want a simple audio player that is not a complex library manager, doesn't think it has to be a browser as well, and ...just plays music.

[Steve Oliver 1]

Re: useful features

Another vote for Foobar2000. I switched from Winamp last year from and have been happy with Foobar so far. It has encoding facilities (although you may need to point it at the encoder executables yourself the first time), library, DSP plugins, input plugins, themes/layouts, global hotkeys, selectable output, etc. One of my favourite features is that it supports last.fm's scrobbler natively, without needing the official scrobbler app running in the tray.

[h3]

Re: useful features

Foobar 2000 is the best - There is also a cut down version that I forget the name of that is a single exe.

More importantly it sounds significantly better than anything else that I know of.

[Not That Andrew]

Re: Cut down Foobar2k

The cut down version of Foobar2K is called Boom, it uses the same backend with a heavily simplified interface (doesn't even have shuffle/random). It's just a single exe file, no installer Find it here: http://perkele.cc/software/boom

[BongoJoe]

Re: useful features

I use FoorBar via a DAC through an USB port (i.e. avoiding the Windows mangling of the sound) and it's simply wonderful.

+1 from me too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: useful features

Try Clementine

http://www.clementine-player.org/

[btrower]

And that

Clarifies the difference between Free as in Freedom vs Free as in Beer.

[FrankAlphaXII]

Re: And that

Well noone ever said that WinAmp was free software, it was free of charge but it was always proprietary.

Perhaps AOL will open source it. I doubt it, but you never know.

VLC is free software but I really don't like it on Windows, and I'm not quite sure why I don't as opposed to using it on Linux, where its what I use for all of my media and what I've always used in that environment, whether it was when I was still using Ubuntu or when I moved on to Fedora.

[www]

Re: And that

where's my streamripeeeeeer!

[CADmonkey]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....

*breathes*

...oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's 20 bucks down the shitter after a mere 12 years. What went wrong?

Why didn't they just say "We've finished it, there is nothing more it can do"?

Can anything else play random Albums in FLAC?

[Peter2]

Re: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....

So it's finished and needs no improvement. (actually the biggest recent improvement with Win7 was player options when you hover over the icon on the taskbar!)

So why bother replacing it? I shall retain my copy of winamp until a product comes along that's a lot better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: until a product comes along that's a lot better.

And that would be on a Windows XP machine?

Good man!

[Not That Andrew]

Re: Can anything else play random Albums in FLAC?

If you are talking about shuffling albums, Foobar2k and Clementine can do that

[Wanda Lust]

Re: Can anything else play random Albums in FLAC?

Serviio, a DLNA media server, will play random albums or random tracks from FLAC source, but then one would expect a shuffle play feature. Serviio will also real-time transcode if it recognises a client needs, say, AAC.

I prefer the server based model as I can access it from just about anything: the TV, my iThings with MediaConnect app, Android apps, etc, plus anyone in the household may share the server concurrently. The benign availability of 'quality' music might just, eventually, wean the pre-teen off 1D but, in that, I digress....

[Danny 14]

Re: Can anything else play random Albums in FLAC?

XBMC

[edgar]

Re: Nooooooooooooooo

Jriver media center will play anything you throw at it, audiophile quality, every option you can think of is available for playback, check it out if you are looking for quality. Its not free but well worth the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about shoutcast????

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: What about shoutcast????

Foobar2000 does shoutcast. For music there's no better player for Windows. I use it for ripping CDs to FLAC, converting the FLACs to OGG for a portable player/phone and listening to shoutcast radio.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What about shoutcast????

plays? or broadcasts as well? Will it all still work without the shoutcast.com directory?

[Zmodem]

Re: What about shoutcast????

shoutcast will, there just wont be a central directory, not using the directory makes your station upper class and more professional, then you just goto the server address in your browser and find out their scum

google will probably buy shoutcast and take on macro flash and MS silver whatevers, and bring back shoutcast tv for youtube

[Pete Spicer]

Like some of the other commentators, I moved away from WinAmp with its 3.0 release.

Since I have a decent collection of tracker mods from ye olden games, I wanted a player that could handle reading all kinds of formats and ended up with XMPlay with one of the plugins (DelixTracker) which handles everything I can throw at it.

To the one person who asked about music devices, XMPlay lets you specify which device you want to use, including WAV encoding or LAME (for MP3) or OGG output should you need to transfer formats.

[xperroni]

I wanted a player that could handle reading all kinds of formats and ended up with XMPlay

Indeed, for Windows XMPlay is the bee's knees. It's effective and keeps out of the way, both in terms or computer resources and UI real estate. On Linux I seldom have a problem using whatever is standard for my current distribution (Mint at this moment), but try as I might I never got to grips with WMP.

[Steve 151]

Shame

I wrote my (dreadful) final year dissertation on the relative merits of Winamp vs WMP this makes me feel old

[Destroy All Monsters]

Good times were had with WinAmp on Windows 2K while I was installing server racks in the middle of the night. Only me and a bottle of Vodka. Only to get told by the female secretary that I was crazy.

Ah yes, so long ago.

[Piro]

That actually sounds like a good time

Booze and servers, what could ever go wrong?

Honestly, not very much. The biggest problem is simply forgetting what exactly you did. Maybe if you get drunk again when you need to support it, you'll be in the same frame of mind..

[Jordan Davenport]

Re: That actually sounds like a good time

Maybe if you get drunk again when you need to support it

Isn't that standard protocol? Seems to be the case any time I have to call for support for things beyond my demarc.

[D@v3]

Re: Maybe if you get drunk again when you need to support it

State dependant memory, works for me

[David Glasgow]

And what position...

... did the male secretary adopt?

[John H Woods]

Like Tie Rack ...

... I thought it had gone away years ago.

[Novex]

A bit of a shame..

I switched to Winamp from WMP quite a few years ago now (pre Vista's release I think) due to changes in WMP that I didn't like. Winamp came up trumps as an alternative enough that I bought the Pro version and I've been happy with it most of the time ever since, with just the minor niggle or two.

I've downloaded the latest release, and will keep on using it as long as I can. I even have older computers I can keep running (or get a VM going with Win 7 or XP) which will allow me to carry on as long as those computers keep working.

I will probably eventually have to change to something else, just like I have to change mobile phones eventually (for ones with no removable battery or storage :( ). Life does move on, even when sometimes we don't want it to.

[Azzy]

What a screwing!

Why can't they open source it, or at least release it into the public domain, if they're done with it? Why must they engage in "book burning"?

I use this application on all of my windows systems, and it's integrated with a remote control system that I have put a great deal of time into (based on WWWinamp, but it didn't do everything I needed it to and was no longer being supported, so I decompiled it and added a few features I needed, and fixed a few bugs).

[Not That Andrew]

Re: What a screwing!

Nullsoft is owned by AOL. Good luck getting them to open source anything

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What a screwing!

"Good luck getting them to open source anything"

Like AOLServer?

Or other stuff from this 8 year old article?

I'm not sure they could be described as FOSS friendly, but it's not something they are totally averse to.

[Sly]

BAH HUMBUG!

Winamp is the only media player that will sort the playlist by path AND filename that's I've used thus far. (Will check out foobar2000.) All other media players want to sort by metadata instead and have no way to sort really old stuff that is simply a file (comes up "unknown" in the list and won't use the filename). Sorting my stuff with those shows about 30-50 unknowns. I'll stick with Winamp in Windows and Audacious in Linux. I may switch to Audacious all around if it's stable enough.

[bcassell]

Re: BAH HUMBUG!

You should use a tool like " Tag & Rename " to fill out the ID3 tags (metadata) on your old files.

http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

It can extract the information from the filenames, or from online databases.

[Tommy Pock]

Re: BAH HUMBUG!

or Easytag on Linux. I use that alongside Rhythmbox, no problems here.

[Fatman]

Re: BAH HUMBUG!

or Easytag ExFalso on Linux. I use that alongside Rhythmbox, no problems here.

FTFY!!!

[Cari]

Re: BAH HUMBUG!

or the Auto-tag feature within Winamp...

[Not That Andrew]

Re: BAH HUMBUG!

Or you could use MusicBrainz Picard or MP3Tag to tag your stuff. But, yes Foobar2k can sort by path, and will display the file name in the playlist if there is no metadata

[K]

R.I.P

Shame :( one of the better music players, even on Android.

Perhap they could be convinced to open source it?

[alur]

Winamp OK for me

I've used Winamp since 2000. I don't like Windows Media player because all I want to do is listen to my music files and adjust the equalizer. I don't care about album covers or info about the album. If I want info, I go to the web. I'll miss Winamp.

[ThomH]

WinAMP was a turning point for me...

... well-engineered and extremely popular as it was, its users' obsession with skins and customisation was the first thing that made me feel that I'm something different from the typical self-declared "technical" user. I just want the music to play and the thing that does that to be as invisible as possible.

It's sad to see WinAMP go though. It ushered in the modern world of music consumption.

[Cari]

Re: WinAMP was a turning point for me...

I was trying to remember what it was that got me hooked on it too and totally forgot about all the visual customisation you could have! I just use the large Bento skin and listen to my own music collection now but it was the skins and SHOUTcast that drew me in.

[Paul J Turner]

I will miss it...

When I next want to listen to a CMF file as it should really sound.

I had a plug in for the FM sysnthesis part of Creative Music Files from old games like 'Jill Of The Jungle' etc.

Without it, you just get the MIDI part, IF the player will handle it at all.

I didn't transfer my WinAMP Pro to my new 64-bit PC but went with VLC instead, now I am thinking I need to think again

I will definitely investigate FooBar2000 though, thanks for the tips - http://www.foobar2000.org/.

[Anonymous Coward]

MusicBee

Used Foobar for years until stumbled across MusicBee.

It has the best features of Foobar in a great package.

[Kuddy]

I'll remember the early versions fondly but I also moved away due to v3 bloat. Currently using mediamonkey on the htpc and droids for flac and mp3 but might take a look at foobar2000

[kenth]

i'm surprised

i'm surprised it lasted as long as it did, after AOL got a hold of it. But I wonder if it has to do acquiring Orb recently that took them under, or if it is being removed in advance of a new product coming out.

[Barry Rueger]

Audacious

I've been using Audacious on Linux for a while - what I take to be a Winamp clone? I really can't understand why you need behemoth of a program just to play tunes. http://audacious-media-player.org/

Like Winamp did on Windows, Audacious does on Linux and Windows - gives you a really simple music player.

Seriously, why do the people designing music players feel the need to i-Tunesify them and make large, cumbersome, and confusing?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I love most about WinAMP--and when I had to use Linux, Audacious as well--it's a music player, that just happens to have a media library attached. Unlike every other "player" out there that wants to fill your screen with a giant list of all your files, but might play them too if you're lucky. I want to listen to the music. Maybe I'll glance over and look at the title if I'm not familiar with it, but I don't really want to spend my time organizing or thumbing through my list of music. And I certainly have better things to look at than a huge text list of all the music on my server. One of the best things about WinAMP has always been that you can resize it. If you need the library, it's there; but when you just want to get something done, you can shrink it down and just see the bits you want.

So, yeah... I'm off to download the last version and any plug-ins I might want from their server before we're all stuck with iTunes and foobar.

[RLWatkins]

It was a good run

Sad. I use it on Win7 and on Android. Works well, stays the hell out of my way, doesn't need a lot of tinkering. And it beats the bundled players by miles.

Do I sound too non-technical? No. I've been programming for 40 years and know the value of a tool I can install and use without making a career out of tweaking it.

Typical of AOL to say, "Huge user base? Screw 'em."

[FrankAlphaXII]

Well that blows. I still use Winamp on Windows. The Windows version of VLC has never quite done it for me, though it is the media player I use on Linux. But if I'm listening to music on Windows, I'm doing it through Winamp, I have for a very long time, and nothing else feels right to me. WinAmp's EQ was always better for me, plus all my presets are saved in WinAmp's format, the output plugins were extensively customizable inside of the program. And Milkdrop still had the coolest random visualizations. Looks like I'm gonna have to grab an installer and drop the motherfucker on a CD-R, or a USB drive with a very clear label, WINAMP - DO NOT FORMAT!

Yet again, fuck AOL. Add WinAmp's scalp to the pile that Netscape's is on. My god they're a worthless corporation. I wonder if they'll axe the Nullsoft install system while they're at it, because its old but still useful, and AOL can't have that apparently.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotify

Yep, I used to install winamp almost before any other software on any new pc. Now it's kind of obsolete, I don't want to manage mp3s and disks, Spotify does the trick for me. Hats off to them for giving it a clean send off and retiring it: winamp was legendary. Whip the llamas ass for the last time.

But on a side note I think the pc days are about to make a comeback with those new consoles providing the catalyst and tablets do not cut it with me. Just bought me a new gaming rig instead since the games are cheaper, more varied, and the 9800 graphics card rocks!

[Alan_Peery]

Re: Spotify

I mostly agree, but everything is not available or it's been mucked with. There are are artist who have never been on Spotify, who only put on some of their albums, or who pull them off after they have been there for some time. Other times it seems that the albums are there, but they are remastered versions where the remastering has been done poorly -- or where a live version of the music has been substituted for the studio original...

There are also Spotify annoyances -- if you use Spotify in multiple devices, caching a single track to a fourth device doesn't give an error about exceeding the number of allowed devices. It just silently wipes (at random) the cache of one of the other devices where you have hundreds of tracks cached. A proper approach would be to warn you of the limit, and allow you to stop the caching or transfer the ability from one of the other devices.

Having said all that, Spotify does cover 90%+ of my music listening.

[Zmodem]

the whole of nullsoft left the company when AOL brought it, and forced the corporate office and ties, nullsoft has had 3 people there for 10 years just tweaking a few bugs and the janitor

shoutcast will rule forever, and laugh at all other streaming services, the source will probably be leaked, so everyone can carry on streaming MP3, over the automated transcoder without needing a licence

shoutcast 2, you can infinate relays and nodes from a single source server and used in all university radio`s and dance music and a million other things

[RAMChYLD]

Well, I haven't used it in a while, but I happen to know people who still use it. And I have fond memories of it.

So I created this petition to help them: https://www.change.org/petitions/aol-nullsoft-open-source-winamp

Hoping it catches on.

[Robert Baker]

There are reasons why bundled players are ignored in favour of add-on ones

I first got into ripping music to hard drive by using Windows Mediocre Player to rip an album to WMA. For some reason I've now forgotten (no, it wasn't cause and effect), that drive had to be reformatted soon afterwards, but everything was backed-up first, including that album -- or so I thought.

It was only after I restored the backup, and tried to play the album, that I learned (far too late) that stupid WMP had silently added DRM to those files I ripped, and I should have also backed-up the certificates, w/herever they were stored, so the rip was worthless.

From that moment on, I switched to Winamp and MP3. I only use WMP occasionally, making sure it rips to a lossless non-DRM'd format which I can then convert to MP3 using Goldwave, if the CD can't be ripped by Goldwave directly because it's not (yet?) on FreeDB.

(Hence the "Fail" icon -- fail for WMP being the reason why I switched to Winamp, fail for AOL discontinuing the product especially at such short notice.)

As for the petition, it would be a good idea were it not for the fact that e-petitions aren't worth the paper they're written on. (And it's a pity that the Break The Chain page explaining why has gone.)

[Dave C]

Vanish ?

Used Winamp since it was launched but I managed to go 16 odd years without paying anything, so the news I won't be able to in future leaves me fairly dry eyed.

I run version 2.8 on legacy windows boxes and I'll carry on doing so until such time as I finally cut the ties with Microsoft.

Everyone's needs are different. I hardly ever use playlists and can't stand software which wants to 'organize' my files - including the bloatier versions of Winamp of course (I mean really just fuck off with that). I just want a simple player that handles a range of formats. Winamp isn't perfect but it has some very useful features. Tried lots of others but never found a player I preferred until I came across 1by1, a freeware directory-based player, and I still use Winamp for single files and podcasts.

Winamp (at least the paid for versions of it) may disappear from mainstream shareware sites but it's only going to "vanish from the web" if AOL bothers issuing take down notices to the various legacy software sites which already host every version of it. Those versions which don't need a paid for license will still function as well as they did from new downloads. Might want to grab any plugins or skins before Winamp.com is switched off though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Large collection

My preferred audio player is MediaMonkey Gold (the pay for version). It is the only player I have found which caters for my excessively large collection of over 400,000 tracks.

[Daniel Voyce]

Where can I get a media player that has the same version of Milkdrop that Winamp has?

I use Winamp on the TV in my lounge for background music when mates are around and the Amazing Milkdrop 2 visalisation pack - Does anyone know of another Media player I can get it on? I remember looking a year or so back but it seems the presets that come with Winamp are in a league of their own!

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't you please think about the Androids?

Can anyone suggest an alternative media file player and shoutcast streaming app for Android? I've found Winamp is by far the best. Oh and BTW, just die of some STD, Google. I can't wait to get a FF phone, or a maybe Meego/Tizen phone. Ef Google so hard, man. Sickos.

[Zmodem]

Re: Won't you please think about the Androids?

you can listen to shoutcast streams in any player, if it does'nt support .pls, change the extension to txt and open the url inside

[lorisarvendu]

Been using Winamp for two decades now, with gap-killer and occasional cross-fade plugin. Plus the disk-writer for when I quickly want to dump an mp3 to WAV. What am I going to do now? I feel lost.

[Cari]

Gutted doesn't even come close :( I use VLC to watch videos but WinAMP's been my music player of choice since my family got a PC with an Internet connection. Satan will be skating to work before I use some shit like iTunes and I'm far too lazy to try and get last.fm working with something that isn't the big three - it works with my phone and my PC thanks to WinAMP!

[Elmer Phud]

Milk Drop dropped?

I only use WinAmp for the visualisation stuff via line in.

Anything else out there that is as easy to use?

[Alan_Peery]

Re: Milk Drop dropped?

This looks interesting: http://www.vsxu.com/products/player. From the notes:

Select the sound source you want VSXU to react to:

Line-in or mic for an external audio signal - ensure you adjust your microphone boost to suit as external audio signals will vary on different cards.

AUX or 'what you hear' to react to music from your favourite audio player

[Zmodem]

Re: Milk Drop dropped?

the modern world uses usb DAC for digital audio connection

if your card doesnt have a dac, you need a external usb hub

[Zmodem]

Re: Milk Drop dropped?

give it 10 years and RCA leads will be fully replaced on all hardware with micro usb and just transfer the audio stream as is

[Zmodem]

Re: Milk Drop dropped?

optical sends a signal and nothing else, RCA leads cannot handle all frequencies and need more wire strands and AWGs for different speakers, and hardware to amps and will loose frequencies along the cable depending on how long the cable is

DAC transfters the stream packets as it is from the original source, and will never change until it reaches your speakers

first comes studio hardware, and audiophilie seperate hifi`s, then all other domestic hardware that catches on to the way it will be

[Zmodem]

Re: Milk Drop dropped?

in 10 years, all RCA leads will be replaced with micro USB and DAC on hifi`s, studio hardware, your TV/boxes to AV amp, and everything else in between

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks God!

I flirted with this thing briefly (a couple of days perhaps) in the 1990s, but the interface was so garish, I ditched it and never came back. And, every time I see it on some poor soul's computer, I have a faint impression it comes bundled with some shit spamware. I never understood why people are still attracted to it. After all, there are many players who do exactly the same job, without resorting to rococo gui. After all it's supposed to play audio files (mainly), not look pretty on my screen?

[Roland6]

Re: abandonware

From a quick read of the Winamp site and forum, it would seem there is no real reason why the source code etc. can not be published, since Nullsoft/AOL own the copyright and seem to be prepared to abandon the work.

I suspect releasing it as a 'textbook' implementation of a software media player, would also limit the extent to which nefarious parties could claim retrospective infringement...

[Lexxy]

I still use Winamp to this day and it's a shame to see it go.

What else will play my .MOD files?

[Zmodem]

xmplay, its light weight, has proper custom shape skins and can use winamp plugins

kjofol still exists, the r0n coder, stopped work on kjofol and added custom shaped skins to winamp

[Longrod_von_Hugendong]

That is a sad day...

I used to use WinAmp, but that sadly seems to be its problem - We all used to use it.

Still, a sad day never the less.

I think i will download it now. I have like 10 tracks on my computer, everything else comes from Spotify now.

[Oli 1]

one of the only bits of software i bought! - a real shame.

I remember when AOL bought them and thought this is the end, and we got another decade out of them. truly a shame to see them go, but i wont be uninstalling anytime soon, so long live the llama!

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadcast Use

In the days before radio station playout software was both cheap and reliable, I used Winamp to varying degrees to run the playout for 3 RSL's. The final one in 2002, everything came off of Winamp.

You could run multiple instances and get each instance to play out via a separate sound card. That's not something you can take for granted even today with non professional software. Meant I could route each instance through a separate fader.

I was still using it as my main media player until 2008 when I migrated to the Mac.

Also spoke to a friend this morning who at this very moment is using Winamp to play a test feed on a soon to launch broadcast service. Can't say more but the versatility of Winamp and small footprint made it ideal as a reliable player ahead of the proper pro kit being switched on ahead of launch.

Hope they open source it but somehow doubt that will happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Broadcast Use

exactly how I use it, too. 4 copies of WinAmp, each self-contained in its own folder and routed to 1 of 4 faders on the mixing desk. Nice small user interface, with a line of them along the bottom of the screen, and the whole thing is controlled from a custom keyboard with start/cue buttons via a script I wrote in AutoHotKey. Even rigged up a Lucky Dip feature to select a random track and make the show more varied.

AutoHotKey can send stop/start/volume messages to each of the four as required.

What a sad loss this will be, I will have to download all the versions I may ever need and make sure to back them up!

[Zmodem]

Re: Broadcast Use

you need deckadance, and just make a automix playlist

http://www.image-line.com/documents/deckadance.html

if your not running deckadance as a standalone app, but as a VSTi in FL Studio, you will need radio caster to catch what you hear and send it to a shoutcast server, the winamp DSP only has linein and is slow

http://www.djsoft.net/enu/radiocaster_details.htm

if your hard, you can plug in a dj controller, and control deckadance thru midi

http://www.vestax.com/v/products/detail.php?cate_id=186

[Unicornpiss]

My favorite media player..

It will be missed.

[Mark Allen]

Winamp - not WinAMP, WinAmp, WiNaMp

Please... it is Winamp. Always has been. Just looks weird when these odd capitals creep into the way some people type it.

And it still will keep working fine until Windows 9 comes along and changes how audio works or something daft. And even then I expect someone out there will hack in a solution, or create a new plugin.

Also those who keep talking of "bloat" clearly haven't used the current installer which lets you deselect everything you don't want. It has become a very modularised, plugin based player. So you can strip it back to the bits you actually want to keep.

There is no other piece of software I have been using since the 1990s.

Choice is being removed. There was a time when people liked to be different - now there seems a strange acceptance of using what you are given. WMP and iTunes dominate. And both of those tools are awfully limited. VLC and Media Player Classic may be great players, but no good at managing my library.

I will fight to keep Winamp working on all my PCs as long as I physically can. Still a great bit of kit.

[Cari]

Re: Winamp - not WinAMP, WinAmp, WiNaMp

Winamp and WinAMP seem to both be applicable according to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winamp#History), it got renamed from WinAMP to Winamp in its earlier versions. Depends on which ones we are all looking back fondly on.

[Steve Graham]

This is a coincidence. I just uninstalled Winamp from my Android phone yesterday to make some room. (App updates were silently failing. Thanks, Google.) Winamp on Android had an unusually large footprint compared to its functionality.

I don't use my phone for music very often, but I'll look out for something lightweight. The version of Cyanogenmod on the phone comes with Apollo baked in (stupid decision) but its UI is mental.

[Rumournz]

I still use Winamp today

on my linux box - it's kinda sad that the best music player on linux (you milage may vary) is winamp

i just have the playlist window open, and the keyboard shortcuts have probibly imprinted themselves into my DNA by now...

[DropBear]

I have to admit I'm flabbergasted by all that "it stops working tomorrow, OH NOES!" attitude - is this some side-effect of the prevailing "cloud" mentality of the day or what...? "They switch it off and it's gone"? Sure, I'm saddened to see it "officially buried", but that doesn't mean that A) the copy I use will suddenly stop working B) I cannot keep installing it ad infinitum as long as I like (or until it becomes technically incompatible), or C) it won't still be available *somewhere* on the net exactly ten seconds and a Google search away. Do you seriously expect it to just vanish off sites like oldversion.com that still has dozens of versions of it? And all the various Russian archives / FTP sites too, 'cause maybe AOL asked them nicely...? Honestly, I just don't get it...

[foo_bar_baz]

Security updates?

Eg.

https://secunia.com/advisories/46624/

https://secunia.com/advisories/45279/

https://secunia.com/advisories/46882/

[TechFreak319]

Don't worry, there's LOADS of other media players out there, that are just as good as Winamp and I am not talking about Windows Media Player, Real Player, Quick Time and VLC either!! Just do a search using the specs that you want to use it for!! CNET( http://download.cnet.com/windows/ ) is a good place to look as well as other freeware programmes/software sites!!

By the way, I never paid a single dime for Winamp and I got all the features that I required!!

But, its true, once the big guns get hold of anything, then things are never the same!! As I always say, if it aint broke, don't fix it!!!

Winamp was excellent for FLAC and OGG!!

[Florence]

WOW, this post was brought to you from the year 2000.

Although it's doubtful that people were still using RealPlayer back then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it's used an entire decade's worth of precious exclamation marks in just one post.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Neutron for Android. i've never found anything else that's even remotely close in terms of sound quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot all about that

Was hideous back in the day. I still use Ultra Player v2.112 with the gargoyle skin. No updates since 2001 and still going strong. Could never stand the whole drive towards "libraries". Add > Folder > Play. Awesome random play too, which manages to achieve some excellent mixes for some bizarre reason.

By far the best feature though, is the scrolling info bar (admittedly looking dodgy ever since Windows 7), which when empty says "Attention all planets of the solar federation. We have assumed control". See version number :)

[Robert Baker]

Re: Forgot all about that

Sounds like there will be a Rush to download it. :-)

[BongoJoe]

Re: Forgot all about that

...always easy to spot the drummers on here, isn't it? :)

[Inachu]

feeding vs being fad

The reason winamp died is that they took away control. Yes you people at nummsoft know this to be true!

when winamp 5 busted out new and fresh people were hosting itheir own videosi and you people at nullsoft took that control away. you change the backend menu system to be corporate driven drivel of worthless videos that drove away customers. Keep power with the people and winamp would have become a legend but no. corporate greed took control. So they grounded up the Llama at the expense of the corporate soul.

bring back the backend when it was first published and watch the people return.

[regorama]

foobar2000 rocks used it for years , free open source fully skinable

[Not That Andrew]

Foobar2k isn't Open Source, but it's free to use and remarkably difficult to make a donation to the developer because he uses that stupid flattr microtransaction service (have you ever tried making a single donation through them, not a repeating one?). I've reluctantly come to the conclusion he doesn't want the money.

[EL Vark]

Nuts

Thanks for the tip, I just grabbed both the full and lite versions of the last version. I've been using Winamp since it's inception and continue to use the Lite version today, with the "Expensive HiFi" (Sony-like) skin which I haven't changed for years and years. It does literally everything I could possibly want from an mp3 player and does it very well. The equalizer is particularly good and the sound through my 12 year-old Altec 3-way system with it's thundiferous sub-woofer remains wholly adequate (sub-true Hi Fidelity but still miles better than any portable device with their pipsqueak headphones). Newer and bigger and brighter isn't always better. Rest ye well, faithful llama.

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ might take it

The word is microsoft might be buying winamp along with shoutcast from AOL http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/21/source-microsoft-in-talks-to-buy-shoutcast-and-winamp-from-aol/

Not sure if that's better or worse than shuting down.

[Zmodem]

Re: M$ might take it

microsoft are too retarded, and nobody will ever switch or update current shoutcast servers to some middleclass puppy dog only half works streaming service

a mans street cred will be gone for good on all dance radio stations, and microsoft will add a auto bleeper

[Zmodem]

Re: M$ might take it

$20 a year, for 1 server and 4 relays and a mp3 key, is`nt much when you can charge people $100 for a automated jungle advert in shoutcast 2

[FuzzyTheBear]

Open Sourcing

Why do manufacturers do not open source their apps when they abandon them ?

It would be logical to do so.

[RNixon]

Re: Open Sourcing

Because they often don't own the source. Winamp almost certainly contains licensed, patented code owned by other companies.

[Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance]

Audacious and QMMP http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/

for Linux.

Foobar2000 and Winamp 2.95 for win.

Big fan of REAPER for win too - http://cockos.com/products.php

Justin is a pretty cool guy and has carved out a nice little well-respected niche for himself in the Audio world. REAPER isn't everyone's cup of tea, but most anyone can benefit from the tools it has, even if they don't use it as their main production DAW. I even use it for auditioning files, because, well, in the windows world there is no good Audio Browser believe it or not. Not free any way. Or even remotely free. If anyone comes up with one for 50 quid/dollars they will make a killing. People in the audio world been crying out for one for years now. Don't look like it's gonna happen. Iced Audio - AudioFinder for windows would be a dream, but it's Mac only. There are lots of promising and half-baked solutions out there, but no complete solution.

But yeah, Winamp 2.95 for the light fun stuff, and Foobar2000 for the heavier, more audiophile work. Check out the Hydrogenaudio forum - them boys knows their audios - all free. They host the Foobar2000 site there and you can see screenshots and get an idea what it is capable of. You can theme it from a bare bones small single window to a full screen multi-playlist monster with your own skins/colours.

I've got a REAPER licence up to v5, and it is so reasonably priced, I'll be buying another one when the time comes. Thanks Justin. Who knew all those years ago when that Winamp thing came out what an amazing journey digital audio would take, even just a few years later. A true revolution.

There's a thread about Winamp disappearing over at the Cockos (Justin's new company) forum:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=131529

AIMP3 seems to be quite popular as a replacement for Winamp itself though.

[Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance]

http://www.aimp.ru/index.php?do=features

if you are interested in AIMP3 as a replacement for Winamp.

Run the URI through urlvoid if you don't trust it.

[fedoraman]

<grammarnazi>

that uses oh so LITTLE cpu cycles.

FEW..

</grammar nazi>

Please support your local XML Nazis ;-)

[Zot]

It's not as if it's going to be wiped from your computer.

Why are a lot of people saying they'll miss it!? If you have the Install for the version you need, then just keep it.

Stop using the Internet like a Cloud storeroom, where shelf cleaning affects you directly for some reason.

It's not going to disappear from your own computer storage devices.

[Levente Szileszky]

Sign the petition for at least releasing Winamp to the community...

...here: https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/aol-keep-winamp-alive-or-let-it-go-open-source

[Julian Bond]

Some random comments

- Apparently we're not supposed to build a music collection any more. nothing else seems to work for those of us with really big collections. As much as anything it's the 5 pane window of the tree, artist, album, track, playlist that differentiates Winamp from pretty much every other player.

- And on that same subject, where's my 1Tb iPod Classic. Eh, Apple?

- Now where's Google in all this? If Winamp Android is better than Google play, perhaps Google could buy it. They need a desktop music player.

- It's not like it's costing AOL much. So why close it down? Is this some US MBAs idea of cost saving to get themselves a pay rise?

- MS buying Winamp is likely to be a disaster if Skype is anything to go by. It'll be fine for a year until some middle manager will want to rationalise the product set and combine WMP with Winamp creating a monster of the worst parts of both.

- Ideally, Winamp should be sold back to the original authors, or perhaps a consortium of the remaining programmers, for pennies.

- Same goes for last.fm. CBS don't know what to do with it, and so it's costing them money. So sell it to somebody who cares and can make a proper go of it.

- Why does an iTunes update take ages, require a huge download and often require a reboot. While a winamp update is 16mb and can be completed in under a minute?

- Makes me sad when things you come to rely on, disappear. Like Winamp, last.fm API and free streaming, Google reader, Latitude, iGoogle, Friendfeed, Turnpike, and so on.