Winamp Shutting Down On December 20

New submitter Cid Highwind writes "If you want to download the latest version of Winamp, you'd better do it soon. According to a new banner on the download page, AOL will be pulling the plug on the iconic llama-whipping music player in a month. 'Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.' Ars Technica ran an article last year detailing how the music player lost its dominance."

Comments

FB2K FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Foobar2000 is great!

Re:FB2K FTW

[Russ1642]

No it isn't. You collect pieces of Foobar and put them together to try to get something that acts sort of like a music player.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Joce640k]

Not as good as Winamp Lite.

Re:FB2K FTW

[baka_toroi]

Try managing 150000+ files on Winamp and tell me how it goes. Now try that again with Foobar.

Re:FB2K FTW

[war4peace]

You should really try AIMP3. I've been using it for years.
For remote functionality (being able to access your music - and videos - from anywhere) I use PLEX Media Server.

Re:FB2K FTW

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

No it isn't. You collect pieces of Foobar and put them together to try to get something that acts sort of like a music player.

I think that we are seeing the fundamental collision between the "Freedom is good, freedom indistinguishable from Turing completeness is better!" camp and the "I've got a task to do here, Make It So." camp...

In the context of a relatively prosaic problem like music playing, I'm more inclined to sympathize with the latter camp (though not to the extent of some shit like iTunes); though my sympathy for the former camp leads me to desire an ideal solution that would consist of a sane set of default pieces of Foobar, more or less approximating WinAmp, with the option to go down to the basement and tamper with the advanced EQ settings, custom plugins, audio-oriented LISP implementation, etc.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Try managing 150000+ files on Winamp and tell me how it goes. Now try that again with Foobar.

I'll try that just as soon as I've earned enough concussions to be either enough of a hoarding audiophile or a douchebag wannabe DJ* to have 150,000+ audio files that absolutely NEED to be cataloged. Meanwhile, here in the other almost-all of the human population, we need a slightly more relevant, real-world reason.

*: The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Hsien-Ko]

VLC's terrible for music. Ever noticed the pitch bending? Bad playlist controls? Long initialization times? Lack of seamless transition?

Re:FB2K FTW

[lesincompetent]

Even though i love VLC, i must agree with you on this :(

Re:FB2K FTW

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Indeed.

My media player of choice these days is MPC-HC for casual listening with XBMC for dedicated playing. MPC-HC, while not a perfect interface, does the job and doesn't have these strange delays and buffering that VLC runs into, while at the same time supporting bit perfect playback via WASAPI.

XBMC is beautiful, but if it had a minimalist mode in addition to its 10 foot UI I'd probably use it exclusively. It also does an amazing job at cataloging your media if you want it to.

Re:FB2K FTW

[locopuyo]

I have 80gb of music and winamp works great for me.

Re:FB2K FTW

[epyT-R]

A society that only satisfies the lowest common denominator is no society I'd want to live in. foobar is targeted at digital audio fans. Everyone else uses whatever default their OS assigns.. It's nice to know that foobar is quick and efficient even for those who don't have that many files.

Re:FB2K FTW

[sleekware]

I was a big fan of Winamp and I converted to foobar2000 for my music a few years ago. It's true that it can be cumbersome out of box, but I save my settings and it works for me and it's the only player I use now. It is much different from Winamp, but I like it much better. That being said it isn't for everyone, but if you like to tweak the heck out of things it's your friend. Interesting yet, the guy who wrote foobar used to do some work for the creators of Winamp:

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design, breadth of features, and extensive user flexibility in configuration. For example, the user-interface is completely customizable.[5] Its extensive SDK allows third-party developers enough power to completely replace the interface. foobar2000 supports a large number of audio file formats, has many features for organising metadata, files, and folders, and has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. To maximize audio fidelity in cases where resampling or downscaling in bit depth is required, it provides noise shaping and dithering. There are a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. The core is closed source, whereas the SDK is licensed under the BSD license.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar2000 foobar2000 site: http://www.foobar2000.org/ download: http://www.foobar2000.org/download

Re:FB2K FTW

[Hsien-Ko]

I use MPC-HC for instantly previewing (including WAV and MIDI files), replacing the overly bloated Windows Media Player for that role. It's no playlist player, but that's what I use Foobar2000 for. I used to have plugin cold turkey on the Winamp->FB2k transition, until I realized the plugins are foo_gep and foo_dumb - not immediately as noticable as in_mod and in_spc/nsf/vgm/etc

Re:FB2K FTW

[baka_toroi]

Huh, that's strange. My experience and that of my friends is the complete opposite. Maybe Winamp has improved dramatically on that aspect since 2011?

Re:FB2K FTW

[nucrash]

150 GB here. I still enjoy it. Sure foobar is cool, but I still enjoy breaking out Milkdrop and just letting the collection run.

Re:FB2K FTW

[tepples]

I think that we are seeing the fundamental collision between the "Freedom is good, freedom indistinguishable from Turing completeness is better!" camp and the "I've got a task to do here, Make It So." camp...

I've got a task to do here: play music encoded in a format not anticipated by the developer of the player included with the operating system. This format happens to include a music sequence and bytecode for an 8- or 16-bit virtual machine to interpret it, and it has been shown to fit half an hour of music in well under 100 KiB. Make it so.

Re:FB2K FTW

[EvanED]

A society that only satisfies the lowest common denominator is no society I'd want to live in. foobar is targeted at digital audio fans ...and of course every digital audio fan worth their salt has at least 100,000 files. </sarcasm>

I'm not saying that software should satisfy only the lowest common denominator, just that I suspect 150K files is a pretty severe abnormality even among music fans who love piracy. Personally, I very briefly tried foobar2k, and didn't feel like putting in the effort to figure out how to make it do what I want, so I just use other programs. And on normal-sized collections, they work plenty fine.

Re:FB2K FTW

[AmiMoJo]

It's funny you say that because the one thing that kept me from moving from Winamp to Foobar was the Winamp media manager. It's just so much better than what comes with Foobar. I get the impression you can make Foobar as good if you spend time finding plugins and hacking the UI, but I just want something that works and gives me bit perfect output via WASAPI.

Re:FB2K FTW

[ottothecow]

Yeah. I always loved the winamp media manager.

It was pretty powerful, and even without the features, I liked the fact that the active playlist was held completely separate from the library (as opposed to say...struggling with itunes). You could search your library at will without changing anything in the playlist. They were in separate windows and the paradigm was pretty clear--you play music in the playing window, you search for music in the library.

Then, the playlist had ITS OWN INTERNAL MINI PLAYLIST! You could queue up specific tracks to play next (using j or q keyboard shortcuts IIRC). This great, because you could have your playlist on shuffle, but still be able to specify what song you want to hear next, all while still keeping your playlist sorted by artist/album/whatever. Infinitely better than software where the solution to "shuffle" was to actually shuffle your current playlist which makes browsing more difficult.

I will miss Winamp, but I must confess, I use it far less these days. Spotify has changed the way I listen to music--I no longer acquire music permanently and listen to much of it at work (vs using winamp for many many years as a student). This may not be a good thing...right now I can browse through my music folder and go on a nostalgia trip, much like my parents can flip through their records and CDs...with spotify, I will have to actually remember what I was listening to 15 years ago instead of stumbling across it when I set winamp to "shuffle all". But, it means I have cut out winamp. At work, I use Spotify...and at home mostly listen to music on my HTPC through spotify or XBMC. Winamp only gets used when I am using my desktop for something that doesn't have its own sound (like gaming or editing videos)...which is pretty much only when I work from home.

Re: FB2K FTW

[zevans]

If only I'd known this that time I needed a playlist to last me 4 years.

Re:FB2K FTW

[jimshatt]

Pft, that's NOTHING! I listen to 28 weeks of music for breakfast!

Re:FB2K FTW

[jimshatt]

Winamp had plugins for formats not anticipated by the operating system. I once (LONG ago) wrote a simple plugin that executed .bat files, so I could queue OS commands in my playlist (shutdown at the end of the list, etc.). Pretty cool (if I might say so myself :) ).

Re:FB2K FTW

[Nyder]

Try managing 150000+ files on Winamp and tell me how it goes. Now try that again with Foobar.

I've been using winamp since i discovered it in the early 2000's and I still prefer to use my own directory setup to any file/music management interface a player has.

Sorry to see it going, but then I always use the free version, so I'm part of the problem I guess.

I'm more surprised that Aol is still around honestly.

Re:FB2K FTW

[tchdab1]

Agreed, FWIW. I love (loved?) the Winamp interface. I just wish it supported DLNA.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Musicbee has the same "library > playlist > queue" functionality and a ton of other great stuff for managing and tagging and much more.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Ash-Fox]

Trivially with the media library in Winamp, I don't get the problem?

Re:FB2K FTW

[unique_parrot]

Try milkdrop on steroids http://www.rabidhamster.org/R4/download.php , you won't regret it!!

Re:FB2K FTW

[Khyber]

AIMP3 SUCKS with that re-written wannabe BASS.dll.

The entire typical standalone DSP section (Pitch, Tempo, Speed, Voice Removal) is absolute fucking garbage compared to AIMP2. Horrible warble in FLAC files trying to shift up past half a step with AIMP3, I can do the full 10 half pitches in AIMP2 on the same file with far, far less artifacting.

Re:FB2K FTW

[xeoron]

Foobar2000 has never locked up on me and I have a huge collection, which is a mix of mp3, ogg, and flac files whether the audio is stored on a local Seagate Hybrid Drive and from a mirrored copy on a NAS, but I mostly use it on Linux and OS X with the help of WINE. Winamp use to be a fast lightweight program, but it is not, while Foobar2000 still is, so maybe the problem you had was caused by one of add-on extension. I have had that happen with Firefox and Chrome maybe it completely unresponsive or sluggish, so it stands to reason this could also occur with Foobar2000.

Re:FB2K FTW

[tepples]

Winamp had plugins for formats not anticipated by the operating system.

Exactly my point. With the Winamp SDK gone, there won't be a go-to ABI for input plug-ins anymore.

Re:FB2K FTW

[flyneye]

There was a time Winamp was "probably" destined to handle large loads like that. Then It became bloatware and was obese.Then it packed on the features and it was morbidly obese. It's just holding on till it can pack that last Tbsp. of butter into its heart. Then they pull the plug.

Re:FB2K FTW

[flyneye]

So far I've been through many computers, with many players on many OSs. I still haven't found the combination that would make my hoard a decent home radio station/jukebox. They all crash, whine about memory and just when things work just about tolerably....a new version comes along and screws it all to grease.
I started out with winamp and when it started adding features and bloat, I had to jettison it. I liked the features, but many didn't work or worked marginally. The more they fixed it the more broke it got. I was actually fond of VLC for a while and still use it for some things, but it's not the one.
The desire to make up a media serving station is an old one, I can still do it with unacceptable limitations, like only a few gigs of playlist at a time, or something light that lacks features, but then I'm not going to do this on a NEW computer, it really needs to be an older workhorse, cram it with ram and drives and stick it on the network.

Re:FB2K FTW

[locopuyo]

I only have .16 as much music as you, I feel so inferior with my mere 35 days worth of music I will never listen to.

Re:FB2K FTW

[epyT-R]

That's alright. There are plenty of players out there.. I was referring to foobar's modular approach being targeted at the technically inclined digital audio fan who wants to pick and choose his own config, both in how the audio is played back through his system as well as the GUI. It's fine out of the box, but not really compelling. It's strength is in its customizing abilities.

Re:FB2K FTW

[cykros]

I'll take mpd tyvm. Headless, can stream to icecast, great cataloging, controllable through various cli, gui, or other plugin based clients (irssi and firefox come to mind).

foobar is nice though...just not what I'd go with for usefulness over mpd

Re:FB2K FTW

[fast turtle]

I'd agree that 150k music files are a bit egregarious but when I just checked the numbers for my current collection, I've got a bit over 13k files along with 70+GB and that's just on my computer. If I total up my entire collection of CD's and had the space, I'd easily hit 150K files (been collecting CD's for the last 3 decades) the main issue with even a modest collection like mine is the shear number of duplicates you end up with and foobar2k deals with them easily. In my case, I have them hidden instead of deleted as space is fairly cheap and my entire collection is on a dedicated 2TB external.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Jonah Hex]

I've heard of using AudioGalaxy instead of the built in audio of XBMC, but since it's gone too I'm wondering if anyone has found a great match for XBMC integration. I'm still doing MP3Tag then moving to XBMC's folders which is much too manual for my liking.

Re:FB2K FTW

[hobarrera]

VLC's terrible for music. Ever noticed the pitch bending?

Nope.

Bad playlist controls?

Not everybody uses this, you know. Anyway, What's wrong with the controls?

Long initialization times?

Are you MAD?
I get 25ms initialization time (13ms userspace). What sort of hardware are you using?

Lack of seamless transition?

Care to elaborate? I've had no isues on this terrain either.

The only thing that VLC lacks is media library. And that's why I use mocp when I intend to open more than 2 or 3 files. But that's just about it.

Re:FB2K FTW

[thexfile]

Winamp has a slim version. ;)

Re:FB2K FTW

[Pieroxy]

Does it have a crossfade plugin like Winamp does out of the box?

I use Winamp exclusively when I throw parties at home for the unique reason it has a nice crossfade plugin that allows music transition without any awkward silence in the middle.

I'm sure there are plenty of other players that do just that out there, but Winamp has worked great for me so far so I haven't looked for an alternative.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

foobar2000 works flawlessly out of the box. You only need to add components to add support for obscure audio formats (ie. ROL, D00/D01, NSF, SPC, etc.) or if you want to toss some bling into your interface. Other than that, the default interface is fully customizable and the player has built in support for all major audio formats.

If setting up fb2k is over your head, I suggest you stick to players with less flexibility. My own suggestions for anyone wishing to dump Winamp (everyone should and not because it's going belly up) are Xion and XMPlayer.

Re:FB2K FTW

[fractoid]

It's like 4mb. How obese can it be if it'd fit on three floppy disks?

Re:FB2K FTW

[RoboJ1M]

Doesn't everybody with that class of media library just use their DLNA server of choice or XBMC or something now?
I use Plex, it indexes a bajillion tracks and I just choose what I want to listen to through Bubble on my phone and fling it at the player attached to a sound system :\

Re:FB2K FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

Invest the effort. I had the same idea (I have a collection of some 12K songs), back when I still used WinAmp. I'm glad I'm on foobar2k now. It's so much easier to use, has way more features and is just all around awesome.

My only gripe with it is that there's no native Linux version. It works well in Wine though, plugins and all.

Re: FB2K FTW

[techprophet]

Crossfading is in the default foobar installation, tucked away in the audio settings iirc

Re:FB2K FTW

[Joce640k]

Try managing 150000+ files on Winamp and tell me how it goes. Now try that again with Foobar.

Did you know that modern file systems have things called 'folders' to organize files?

Re:FB2K FTW

[baka_toroi]

Gee, thank you grandpa! Now I'll continue to buy more records and clean my walkman after I fix my VCR.
Do you have any other obsolete idea to share?

Re:FB2K FTW

[Daetrin]

"I liked the fact that the active playlist was held completely separate from the library (as opposed to say...struggling with itunes)."

And perhaps even more importantly, both of them aren't intimately tied to the file system! I still remember the first (and only) time i accidentally added a file to iTunes and then immediately deleted it from iTunes only to find out that the actual file had been deleted in windows! It was also the last time i ever used iTunes for anything other than downloading podcasts.

And i still use the winamp. And as other people have mentioned elsewhere, i've had others comment on the fact. Twice in the past month or two coworkers have wandered by my desk and exclaimed "wow, you still use winamp?!" Everyone else seems to have moved on to streaming music players, but i've already got most of my music locally and don't see any reason to waste bandwidth downloading it over and over again.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Shirley Marquez]

VLC fills a somewhat different need. The great thing about VLC is that it will play just about everything - both audio and video files including strange formats. But its playlist and music management capabilities are poor compared to other programs.

Re:FB2K FTW

[ottothecow]

Bandwidth is cheap, so I don't care about redownloading (also, spotify caches things), but god is spotify a terrible program.

Takes forever to start up, hangs a lot when changing screens, uses a ton of memory, sometimes can't regain audio focus (e.g. if I stop playback, watch a video with something like DTS that causes my receiver to switch modes, and then later try to play a song in spotify again), etc.

It's like a drug though. I know it is bad for posterity's sake since I no longer have a "collection" that can serve as a reference to what I was listening to in the past. They really should add something better than "starring" stuff...If you star an artist, you get every single song added to one giant list that is not easy to navigate; they should have an "add to personal library" type option that lets you grab whole albums or artists, but still leaves the starred section for truly great individual songs. But even though it's bad for future me, present me loves being able to play anything with a click and discover new things super easily (and be able to play whatever I want at work without trying to synchronize a large collection).

Re:FB2K FTW

[fluffynuts]

Man, the one time I actually have a real use for mod points and I don't have any. You've hit the button on the head there. I've had Foobar2k pushed at me for years and in all that time, it still sucks royally. It's a UX nightmare. Winamp is small, fast, just works. Audacious does a good job on Linux, but needs some work on win32 -- and I'm really hoping to get the motiviation & time to do it. Because balls man. Winamp. WTF.

Re:FB2K FTW

[fluffynuts]

Again, I wish I had mod points. This is not a troll. Actual human beings without personality disorders or DJ jobs with 150k tracks do not exist. And DJs use real software, not fsckbare 2000.

Re:FB2K FTW

[almitydave]

...(been collecting CD's for the last 3 decades...

But CDs haven't even been around for 3... Oh... I feel old.

Re:FB2K FTW

[war4peace]

You should really upgrade that 486...

Re:FB2K FTW

[war4peace]

Um... You must have dog ears.
Not saying you aren't right, it's just... while this product might not be for you, it certainly satisfies MY needs. YMMV :)

Re:FB2K FTW

[toddestan]

The best part about Winamp is that it's also a video player, and you get all those great playlist features for video files too. That's the main reason why I've stuck with Winamp, because every other video player I've tried the playlist feature was either very basic, seemed to be tacked on as an afterthought, and/or it takes forever to load a non-trivial playlist of videos. And that's despite the video player in Winamp having some annoying quirks.

Re:FB2K FTW

[hairyfeet]

Folks can make fun of it but you know what I've found works fricking great on my over 80GB MP3 collection? WMP, specifically the WMP 12 that comes with Win 7. Its easy to fix missing tag info with it, has a smart sort so I can cook up playlists like "Things I listened to a lot in the past 6 months but not lately" and all in all its been really solid.

As for TFA the original designer of Winamp said it would die when he left and he said the reason was "the service" AKA AOHell dialup. He said "they just kept jamming more and more crap pushing the service into WA, it didn't matter if our data showed WA users DID NOT WANT the service, that it was costing us users, all they cared about was the service".

Maybe we should get together a petition to have WA made FOSS? After all it wouldn't be the first time a former commercial product rose from the ashes as FOSS, Netscape anyone?

Re:FB2K FTW

[hairyfeet]

You'll probably laugh but ya know what works for me? WMP 12 on Win 7. I can stream my tunes from any system on my network, there is some great third party DSPs that can really let you tweak the hell out of the sound (great for those older tracks that was made with less than optimal MP3 rippers) and honestly I haven't had a bit of a problem with bloat but then again I tend to strip out anything I know I'll never use. But I have my streaming box which is a 1.8GHz C2D with 2GB of RAM so if a system THAT old makes for a good streaming server then most anything will.

Mind a bit of advice? If you want a media tank that will be cheap on your wallet AND your electric bill look up the AMD Bobcat boards on Amazon. Its a 1.6GHz dual core with Radeon 63XX baked in, only uses 18w under heavy load yet is still powerful enough to do 1080P over HDMI and they make great media tanks. Just slap 4GB of RAM in it and place it in any standard mATX case which you can then fill with drives. As a bonus the Bobcat runs VERY quiet, you can even get it passively cooled if you wish, so its easy to just stuff in a closet or corner and forget about. Also makes a great file and backup server BTW.

Re:FB2K FTW

[camg188]

Foobar is also great for tagging and renaming MP3 files. I really like the rename function based of spreadsheet-like functions that use the tag data.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Zanadou]

Maybe we should get together a petition to have WA made FOSS?

Someone's already on to it: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=373763

(Quick link to the petition.)

Re:FB2K FTW

[Khyber]

Um, I'm a guitar player with perfect pitch hearing. Go try it for yourself. As soon as I heard my warm up song in AIMP3 I nearly thought my hardware was going bad. Nope. Just a shit custom implementation of something that was far superior in the first place.

Re:FB2K FTW

[war4peace]

See... my ears can't tell shit for difference :)

Re:FB2K FTW

[Khyber]

Trust me, your ears would be able to tell in a side-by-side or blind comparison.

Re:FB2K FTW

[Wolfrider]

--Deadbeef FTW for Linux :)

A sad day

[Anonymous Coward]

No more llama ass-whipping :(

Re:A sad day

[BitZtream]

Indeed, looks like AOL finally managed to kill it.

Lets face it, everyone thought this was going to happen years ago when AOL first bought it, its amazing its JUST NOW being shut down, though according to the article it appears to be a profitable business unit and AOL is just shutting it down to cut off its own nose.

Re:A sad day

[Jason Levine]

according to the article it appears to be a profitable business unit and AOL is just shutting it down to cut off its own nose.

This is even bigger news than WinAMP shutting down! AOL has a profitable business unit?!!

Re:A sad day

[TangoMargarine]

Where the fuck did that phrase even come from? Is this some bizarre audiophile vernacular thing I've never heard of?

Re:A sad day

[Ralph Wiggam]

Where did you see that Winamp is profitable? The Ars article I read said that AOL didn't release any numbers and that a former employee estimated their revenue to be $6M. But there was no mention of their costs. The picture showed 8 dudes, who certainly did not dress like people who earned a combined $6M. But I'm sure there are plenty of other overhead costs subtracting from that $6M.

Re:A sad day

[TangoMargarine]

Please tell me you're not trying to use "hip, edgy, and irreverent" with a straight face.

Re:A sad day

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

AOL has a profitable business unit?!!

AOL is still in business!?!?!?!!?!?!?!!!

Re:A sad day

[Anonymous Coward]

http://i.imgur.com/NJaL6hV.jpg

Re: A sad day

[erikscott]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME

I guess I'll let you in on the joke. It wasn't a "llama", it was a "LAME" (but pronounced the same way)... kids these days. (sigh)

Re:A sad day

[Jamlad]

Is there any acquisition AOL isn't capable of ruining? Having just breezed through the Winamp acquisition article, and the Flickr acquisition article, I have to wonder if they are actually pure corporate evil. Or is it a case of attributing to malice what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence?

Re:A sad day

[archen]

Yup. Think about it. Say around 10k (conservative example estimate) people paying $20 per month to keep their email address, and not upgrading your mail servers since the 90s. They buckled down into maintenance mode survival years ago, and seem well prepared to leech off what they have. I wouldn't be surprised if they hang around this way for another two decades.

Thanks AOL, thanks for nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely agree with arstechnica. Used Winamp from day one until they got bought.

A victim of animal cruelty legislation...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

After all these years, the Llama will finally have its vengeance...

Re:A victim of animal cruelty legislation...

[Pav]

The vengence of the llama. I think I know why he lost his job.

Re:A victim of animal cruelty legislation...

[unixisc]

I knew that llamas are there in Peru & Bolivia; were they also there in the USSR?

Re:A victim of animal cruelty legislation...

[Anomalyst]

back in the USSR, dont know how lucky they are.

Re:A victim of animal cruelty legislation...

[Xyrus]

The llama isn't dead! He's resting.

foobar2000

[0100010001010011]

I switched to foobar2000 a long time ago as my light weight music player.

Re:foobar2000

[Joce640k]

What's "light weight" about that?

I'm going to stick with Winamp Lite.

Re:foobar2000

[SoupGuru]

If you're looking for lightweight on Windows, check out xmplay. It's sitting at 334.4k. Sounds good, supports a lot of formats, has plugins, skinnable, integrates into your context menu if you want...

Not affiliated with them but I've used their program happily for years now.

http://www.un4seen.com/

Re:foobar2000

[epyT-R]

xmplay is probably the best module player for windows as well, if you're into the old tracker formats.

Re:foobar2000

[realilskater]

Thank you. Nice, lightweight alternative. Only add the features you want to add.

WinAMP still rocks

[CanEHdian]

In "classic" skin you have the good old nice and small interface, and it has excellent 24bit support... Fraunhofer Institute codecs... all sorts of goodies. I wonder what will happen to people who (recently) bought the Pro upgrade...

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[unique_parrot]

Yes, I liked it too, in fact I still like it!
When I had surround sound I loved the dfx plugin, which really was impressive...
So my question is: What now???
The music library database will be hard to replace :(

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[houghi]

I wonder what will happen to people who (recently) bought the Pro upgrade...

I am sure those people will be fine. It is software, not medicine. So I doubt people will die when it isn't available anymore.

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[sandytaru]

Yep, I still use it exclusively because of the classic skin.

Now I have to find another player that uses Milkdrop visulizations, don't I?

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[dstyle5]

I bought the Pro upgrade last week. Maybe I should pick up some Blackberry stock this week while I'm at it.

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[gallondr00nk]

Milkdrop is also still damned pretty.

Winamp, FFDShow and Haali is a potent combination as well. Adding the correct extensions to the DirectShow decoder allows you to play mkv and other formats easily, and the performance is superb.

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[HnT]

I have no idea why you as an end user need 24bit or ultra high sampling rates, that is just something Neil Young tries to push on to people but it has been shown to be useless and worst case it is harmful.
And in independent listener tests done by heise the AAC codec clearly outperformed both MP3 and OGG.

Re:WinAMP still rocks

[visbot]

Actually, there are several ports of MilkDrop available: projectM is MilkDrop for Android and iOS – http://projectm.sourceforge.net/ milkshake is MilkDrop for the browser – https://github.com/gattis/milkshake You also might to check out this JavaScript port of AVS, another visualizer that came with the Winamp installer – https://github.com/azeem/webvs

so what should i be using now?

[Anonymous Coward]

i guess i was the only one left using it??

what should i go to now? I mostly played the shoutcast stations along with the music i converted from itunes a few years ago. I also use it exclusively on android.

Re:so what should i be using now?

[TechyImmigrant]

Windows Media Player works for me when I'm at work. The Sonos is good at home.

I'm sure any other player would work, but WMP is there.

Re:so what should i be using now?

[UltraZelda64]

I wouldn't have stopped using Winamp back in 2006 if it supported Linux. In fact, I'd probably still be using it now, but because I was forced to search for an alternative I've settled mostly on Audacious. I still think Winamp is one of the best players though. I'm not quite as crazy about Foobar2000, but it least it runs better in Wine.

Re:so what should i be using now?

[Calydor]

For the time being why not just keep using WinAMP? They're not remotely disabling all installations of the program, they're just removing all ability to get more updates or even to get the install file. From them, at least. I'm sure it'll be floating around for ages.

If WinAMP works perfectly for you right now it's a reasonable bet it will continue to do so for at least a few years down the line. It's not like the mp3 spec is changing weekly, for instance, and that collection of music sitting on your hard drive? So long as you don't re-rip it to the latest and greatest codec those files aren't going to change. If they work today in WinAMP, they will work in WinAMP in twenty years.

v5.35 is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use Winamp as my primary music player. It supports all kinds of archaic file formats like tracker modules and OPL soundtracks (via AdPlug). Great for listening to old game soundtracks for example. Also, Shoutcast MP3 or AAC streaming internet radios like Digitally Imported are convenient and work great.

v.5.35 was the last good version. The installer for that one still let you choose what parts to install. You could easily omit all the bundled crapware like "Sonic burning engine". After 5.35, the installer was dumbed down.

Re:v5.35 is the best

[Joce640k]

v.5.35 was the last good version. The installer for that one still let you choose what parts to install. You could easily omit all the bundled crapware like "Sonic burning engine". After 5.35, the installer was dumbed down.

...or you could just get the "Lite" version.

Re:v5.35 is the best

[Khyber]

2.71 was the last good version. Every other version since then has been a crashing unstable mess.

But that's okay, because AIMP2 (not AIMP3) works just as well and uses Winamp Plugins.

gapless MP3 playback FTW!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like how VLC still puts gaps in my MP3 playlist. WinAMP has never had a gap between songs that flow into the next track.

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[Hatta]

XMMS is long dead. And Audacious has relegated the winamp interface to second class status.

a sad day we foresaw

[themushroom]

I hate to admit it (okay, not really) that I knew this was going to happen when AOL bought WinAmp... since it was AOL that was waning in popularity and WinAmp that was flying high.

For the purpose of recording it: Same story with Yahoo obtaining Tumblr to buy some continued relevance, since Yahoo itself and its property Flickr have both been fallings stars.

Re:a sad day we foresaw

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to admit it (okay, not really) that I knew this was going to happen when AOL bought WinAmp... since it was AOL that was waning in popularity and WinAmp that was flying high.

It took almost 15 years for your prediction to come true. I don't consider that a useful prediction.

Re:a sad day we foresaw

[Minter92]

Yeah but it's not like losing tubmlr would harm anything :)

Popular on Android

[evilviper]

Actually, WinAmp is one of the better music players available for Android. They've made it freemium, trying to get you to pay $30 for an EQ and whatnot, but it's still got one of the better UIs if you want to use your phone as an MP3 player.

I've switched to RocketPlayer, because I want more format support, like MusePack, AAC, etc., and being able to EDIT those tags you're at the mercy of, in the player is a killer feature, too.

Re:Popular on Android

[mlts]

The one thing I will miss is the fact that Winamp's desktop application and the Winamp Android app can sync with each other. The $30 bones for Winamp premium was well worth it.

On the desktop, other players and managers have slowly eclipsed it (for example, I've switched to MediaMonkey for general MP3 tagging stuff), but it being gone will definitely leave a gap in the Android audio player market. Hopefully something as good or better can come along (be it free, "freemium", or a commercial app.)

It is amazing it survived this long.

Re:Popular on Android

[CronoCloud]

They've made it freemium, trying to get you to pay $30 for an EQ and whatnot

but it's still got one of the better UIs if you want to use your phone as an MP3 player.

Yep.

Re:Popular on Android

[CronoCloud]

I messed up the quote tag.

They've made it freemium, trying to get you to pay $30 for an EQ and whatnot,

The Pro upgrade on Android is only $4.99, well worth it IMHO.

but it's still got one of the better UIs if you want to use your phone as an MP3 player.

Yep.

I've switched to RocketPlayer, because I want more format support, like MusePack, AAC, etc., and being able to EDIT those tags you're at the mercy of, in the player is a killer feature, too.

Edit them? Nice.

dear aol,

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just spin-off the former nullsoft back into its own, independently owned company, with all its current and former tech and patents and products, and let it fend for itself.. it would likely survive just fine on its own.. i.e. without YOU.

Re:dear aol,

[mlts]

Just an updated version of NSIS that supported MSI, MSP and MSU files would make NullSoft a profitable company within months.

Oh Man- My Lightshow

[gnarfel]

My very first light shows we're done using AVS Studio plugin. It was sick. You could render text, create complicated intricate patterns, specify coloring directly (not just a pass filter over an existing image) and even adjust all of it in real time on a second monitor. Modern VJ apps like arkaos and resolume don't even dent the surface of the on-the-fly stuff you could do in AVS, even if they do have more features overall.

Re:Oh Man- My Lightshow

[BrookHarty]

Thats one thing I loved about Winamp, all the plugins. Nothing really compares to the visual plugin workshops and the huge selection is awesome. But for simple day 2 day playing of mp3s I've moved onto foobar, I had to tweak a plugin to add ratings to mp3s idtag but its fast and works great.
For android, poweramp is great and works well with bluetooth metadata. Always thought a full screen classic winamp display on android would have been awesome, but they didnt do that as an option.

I remember back on my 60mhz pentium desktop barely able to play high quality mp3s using Winplay3. Ahh the memories.

Re:Oh Man- My Lightshow

[gnarfel]

Probably still winamp.

Re:Oh Man- My Lightshow

[visbot]

Check out this port of AVS for the browser then – https://github.com/azeem/webvs It's fairly new, but the development proceed fast, so there's hope that all the effects of AVS will be supported soon. There's also a conversion tool for your old AVS presets – https://github.com/grandchild/AVS-File-Decoder But of course you can run the plugin in other players, including foobar2000, Aimp3 or XMPlay – http://faq.visbot.net/

Huh? Color me confused.

[Dripdry]

So a venture capitalist apparently offered the creator 5 million for Winamp and that was declined... so... wouldn't that mean there are other plans for the IP?

Re:Huh? Color me confused.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think that AOL may have reached the point where they've started outsourcing management to the same senile old people who are their core dialup subscriber base.

Open source it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just do it.

Re:Open source it.

[unixisc]

...and port it - come up w/ LinuxAmp, BSDamp, HaikuAmp, and any other amps you can think of

Re:Open source it.

[Anonymous Coward]

HurdAmp?

Re:Open source it.

[shadowknot]

z/VSEAmp?

Re:Open source it.

[unixisc]

HurdAmp?

Then it will have to go under GPLv3

Re:Open source it.

[martiniturbide]

Open sourcing it will allow the software to keep going !!

Re:Open source it.

[Unknown Lamer]

They did released Milkdrop under the BSD license a few years ago, there's a clone for OpenGL. XBMC uses it, and it can even load Milkdrop 1.x presets (totally just grabbed a huge set of those and am living like it's 2001 right now). I'm unaware of anything that can emulate AVS presets unfortunately.

Audacious can load Winamp 2.x and XMMS skins too. I'm still using it after a few years of flirting with other media players (ok, I may have given up and used xbmc on the teevee machine, but that's because it has a nice party mode and milkdrop!).

Re:Open source it.

[DigiShaman]

http://www.geisswerks.com/about_milkdrop.html. You will find the link to Milkdrop II (2.25c) source. Ryan Geiss is a genius IMHO based off his works alone. He's worked for Microsoft (Kinect development), nVidia, and Google. That's pretty impressive all on its own. Hands down, Milkdrop II is *the* visual to display at parties or in the club.

Re: Open source it.

[unixisc]

On Itanic, since Alpha is dead. What was that - VMS too? Well, so is WinAmp, so looks like another match made in.....

Re:Open source it.

[antdude]

I agree, Nike. ;)

Hence, why I use the original old XMMS in Linux/Debian.

Re:Open source it.

[visbot]

I'm unaware of anything that can emulate AVS presets unfortunately.

AVS does run on foobar2000 and XMPlay, there's a wrapper plug-in called shpeck you will need to make it work. I also remember seeing something like this for Aimp3. Also there is a fairly new effort to run AVS presets in the browser. Not feature-complete yet, but looks very promising! https://github.com/azeem/webvs

Here's to hoping...

[Forbo]

...that someone who had been working on it "accidentally" leaks the source.

Re:Here's to hoping...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

...that someone who had been working on it "accidentally" leaks the source.

That might actually be a worse result. Unless there are Winamp-specific features/interfaces that are either difficult to clone or near-impossible to get full compatibility with, without the source, leaked-but-unlicensed source would just cast suspicion on any winamp-like projects, and fall into a difficult-to-develop for legal grey area (since the source leak itself would be hot, patchsets would presumably be legal; but actual compilation would require hanging out in warez circles and leave the resulting build illegal to distribute.)

Kind of like the issues XBMC had, back when they actually supported Xboxes. Their codebase was fine; but the SDK components required to actually do a build, and possibly the builds themselves, depending on exactly how hungry MS legal was feeling, were always illicit and kind of a pain to deal with.

Re:Here's to hoping...

[evilviper]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi.player

Re:Here's to hoping...

[evilviper]

bitches who suck the dick of people who actually know how to write software.

That sounds like giving back "to the community" to me...

Re:Here's to hoping...

[hobarrera]

Because reading code can be just as fun and useful as writing it for some people.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Awww

[SirLurksAlot]

Who's going to really whip the Llama's ass now?

Re:Awww

[hamburger lady]

pfft. wesley willis has been really whipping the llama's ass in heaven for the last decade. same with horses, tigers, ponies, you name it.

Re:Awww

[fliptout]

I saw him perform in Austin around 2002. My Taiwanese gf and I had a jolly good time. Even better was overhearing guys in another band gripe about how Wesley Willis pulled in more fans than them.

Re:Awww

[Internetuser1248]

Who's going to really whip the Llama's ass now?

Winamp... I don't understand why people think it is going to suddenly disappear. I haven't needed to update winamp in years, I only have a newer version because I sometimes lose the installer. What exactly is going to change that will make me need a new music player? My music is still all in mp3 format, I don't use any of winamp's online services. The program is finished and complete. I don't need support from AOL and I never did. In a few years there will be new developments and winamp will slowly become obsolete, but those same new developments will result in new software being developed that caters to them. I really don't see the problem here. Winamp will be able to play me mp3s until I no longer need to listen to them or my OS no longer has windows 7 compatibility mode.

Re:Awww

[nightsky30]

Don't forget Batman!!!

Re:Awww

[Trashcan Romeo]

According to the actuarial tables, I'll probably live another 30 years. Windows 7 compatibility mode may only endure 20 years. So I'm still nervous.

Re:Awww

[cffrost]

Who's going to really whip the Llama's ass now?

Winamp... I don't understand why people think it is going to suddenly disappear. I haven't needed to update winamp in years, I only have a newer version because I sometimes lose the installer.

You can get whatever version you want here: http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/

I kept this URL since I had some problem (I can't remember) with v5.622+.

Re:Awww

[kermidge]

Nice link. All I get is "Forbidden."

Re:Awww

[JThundley]

There have been security vulnerabilities in Winamp. I think it's mostly based on funky decoders and streaming stuff. This doesn't really affect me since I trust the source of my ripped music and don't stream stuff.

Re:Awww

[Reziac]

Who installs it? I just drag the old install to the new machine. I think I'm still on v2.9, for that matter.

Re:Awww

[cffrost]

Me too — I suspect that either the link I posted drew too much attention, or widespread deployment of wget (in order to copy the site for posterity) is provoked AOL/NS into locking down the site. (Web directory listings are nearly always 403/401 in my experience.)

That link worked for years, and I checked it mere seconds before I posted it. I wish I had copied that directory and put it up as a torrent. I guess I may have thought NS was being "cool" by allowing dir/list access there to those who found it.

I'm really sorry to anyone who didn't get there in time, and for not having created a torrent. :o(

Re:Awww

[kermidge]

Yeah, listen, hope it didn't seem I was knocking you for the bad link. It happens. Turns out a quick search turned up another source: http://www.oldapps.com/winamp.php (I hesitate to post it; argued with meself to no avail, so it goes.)

Cheers. Btw, your sig makes a good reminder; we can too easily forget stuff in the midst of the hurly-burly.

Re:Awww

[cffrost]

Thank you, buddy. :o)

Thank goodness ICQ is still working.

[LWATCDR]

I have to wonder why AOL bought ICQ and WinAMP. Did any of ICQ end up in AIM?

Re:Thank goodness ICQ is still working.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

ICQ and AIM are both OSCAR-protocol based; but, to the best of my knowledge, the only common treatment was that AOL was a dick about any 3rd-party implementation of an OSCAR client. Aside from that, AIM basically pretended that ICQ didn't exist, and vice-versa. AOL always was a somewhat puzzling company.

Re:Thank goodness ICQ is still working.

[NJRoadfan]

TOC was stripped down compared to OSCAR, but was an open and documented protocol. AOL made it available specifically for 3rd party developers to access their network.

A truly sad day..

[Garnaralf]

Farewell, old friend. Your icon has been on my desktop for 15 years. And I will miss you.

Re:A truly sad day..

[mmell]

Why? Are you uninstalling it? Or just removing the icon from your desktop?

I hate AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate AOL. I have always hated AOL. AOL shareholders can burn in Hell.

A Big Fucking Fuck You!

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[Anonymous Coward]

QMMP on the other hand seems quite alive.

Re:I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's

[Joce640k]

Your loss.

Shame on AOL

[DigitAl56K]

... for taking a great product with a large and growing user base and a lot of potential, then going virtually nowhere with it for year after year after year, until the only thing left to do was to kill it.

R.I.P. Winamp, you helped define the 90s and let the way for compressed digital formats.

Let's hope all the specialist plugins for all the legacy/specialist file formats that have been created over the years find a good home with ongoing support.

Re:Shame on AOL

[DigitAl56K]

When Winamp first appeared it was one of the first mass market players to handle MP3 playback at a time shortly after the FHG encoder began to be distributed and competitors like XING, LAME, etc. were just starting to appear. Hard drive storage capacities were still tight - you wouldn't want to fill your disk with CD quality WAV files, but people could store many albums with MP3s without resorting to burning CDs. Napster/gnutella/Frostwire/etc. would come along soon after and transform the way teenagers of the period acquired music. Later, subscription services etc. would be born.

Winamp may not have been around throughout the _entire_ decade, but towards the end of the decade your average joe was getting online, and Winamp was there leading the way for digital music formats that are still popular well over a decade later. Times move fast in computing, but there are probably not many Windows users here who haven't popped open Winamp at some point, cranked up their speakers, and popped open the visualizer.

Re:Shame on AOL

[TheRealMindChild]

Before winamp, you had Winplay 3. You couldn't even seek to a position in the song. However, Winplay 3 was easy on the system, where winamp would stutter at scrolling a webpage.

Download Any Version of Winamp

[bobbutts]

Get your Winamp here:
http://www.oldapps.com/winamp.php

as much a loss to Internet DJ's

[Anonymous Coward]

With the exit of Winamp, this narrows the field of software for Internet DJ's that wish to stream via Shoutcast or Icecast. Using Winamp and the correct plugin, it was possible to try one's had a being an Internet DJ without expensive software. This leaves SAM, with it's free trial period but high price tag and Virtual DJ

Re:as much a loss to Internet DJ's

[CronoCloud]

(caveat, I've DJ'd on Second Life, but only for fun and but rarely)

well, you could always continue to use Winamp and the Shoutcast DSP. Most of the Windows DJ's I know in SL..(and I know more than a few) just grimace and pay for the SAM license.

For us Linux users, if you want something easy to use that you can use your mic with...IDJC is preferred...though it requires JACK which means it's a PITA to setup if you're running pulseaudio as the default

Grid know what the OSX users use? Simplecast or something I think.

Re:as much a loss to Internet DJ's

[CronoCloud]

Au contraire, with a dedicated cheap old PC you can stream Shoutcast for years

Well yes, but he's referring to the Winamp Shoutcast DSP which makes it easy...and lets you voice over as well.

Shucks, I still use the same WS-FTP I downloaded for Windows 95.

It works in modern Windows? I remember trying it in WinXP and it not working well, so I tried CoffeeCup FTP and that was nagware at that time....I ended up with Filezilla (on both Linux and Windows), rarely use it, but it does come in handy sometimes.

Re:as much a loss to Internet DJ's

[new death barbie]

Nicecast is awesome for streaming right from iTunes. Also allows voiceover.

I remember when Winamp ruled the earth

[wjcofkc]

It would be nice if companies would automatically open source abandonware, even if they have to strip half the code of anything that infringes on outside patents. Of course, it would be nice if companies would do a lot of nice things. But they don't, and won't - because companies aren't nice.

Re:I remember when Winamp ruled the earth

[IndustrialComplex]

It's not a matter of nice, doing something like that costs money. If it were as simple as dumping the code on the web, a lot might actually do that if just for the PR boost, but going through the code to make sure you didn't accidentally publish something that was later bought up by some patent/copyright troll is an expensive and risky prospect.

If you are asking people to take a risk for you, it's only fair that you compensate them for the risk.

1999

[themushroom]

Okay, yes, it did take 14 years for that to happen. Odds were by 2005 AOL would sink the ship -- but it turns out people still needed MP3 and CD playing software on their computers, no matter who owned Nullsoft.

So now what will AOL rely upon to keep it relevant?

Lost its dominance perhaps

[nurb432]

But its still relevant and usable.

Overheard from an AOL executive

[Provocateur]

What do you CD warehouse? Start shipping them ASAP!

Dang my luck

[motang]

First I buy Songbird on my phone, and they close down. Then I move on to Winamp, now they are shutting down. I can't seem to catch a break.

Re:Dang my luck

[Sunshinerat]

Please don't buy PowerAmp.
thx

Re:Dang my luck

[unixisc]

Can you buy Windows 8.1 for your PC/laptop?

Re:Dang my luck

[motang]

Same here, I loved SongBrid and it's YouTube playlist. :(

Aimp is a great replacement

[Jagungal]

http://www.aimp2.us/

Been using it for a while. It is like WinAmp without the crud.

Re:Aimp is a great replacement

[aztracker1]

As much as I didn't appreciate most of the crud... I did like the shoutcast stuff (though different versions were better/worse than others) ... Also, since the release of 5, I've used the dark theme, and left it that way.

Re:Aimp is a great replacement

[svobodniy]

It's a fake adress with the fake donate on the site. The real adress of AIMP project is http://aimp.ru/

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately the ones that replaced it look more like full-desktop browsers. I wanna listen to my tunes, not read.

Visualisations!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame, winamp with milkdrop still has the best visualisations of any music player out of the box.

Re:Visualisations!

[Hsien-Ko]

I got over the visualization novelty quickly with Geiss some 15 years ago.

Re:Visualisations!

[unique_parrot]

yes, but try this and you are blown away: http://www.rabidhamster.org/R4/download.php Make VJ with http control or just enjoy...

large playlist handling and skipless play

[soldack]

Winamp was the first player that could handle massive playlists. I could drag a network folder with over 80 GB of music and it would populate the playlist in seconds. I could then randomize and walk through that list without repeats for days. It also played skipless so that live albums didn't have annoying breaks. New players today still can't do that. Sigh. Their android app is pretty good too. I guess I will jump to amazon now. Their cloud playing is great.

Re:large playlist handling and skipless play

[Khyber]

Try AIMP2.

" New players today still can't do that"

Oh yes it can.

Re:large playlist handling and skipless play

[fatphil]

When I first moved to linux in the 90s, *only* xmms was able to play skipless, winamp wasn't. (And as one might expect, as every piece of software eventually turns to shit, a feature they added in xmms was to put all the skips back in again - joy. Mpg123 for me now. I manage my audio files myself. My mp3 player does nothing but play mp3 files. And my ears have no need for "visualisations".)

I suggest OggFrog!

[Anonymous Coward]

Need a replacement? Try Ogg Frog! (despite the name, it plays more than just ogg vorbis). It's cross-platform, using zoolib, which means it looks and feels like a native app on Windows Me, Linux, BeOS, MacOS 9, and BlackBerry OS. The lead programmer, Michael Crawford, is an expert c++ programmer (more of a software architect, really) and can write industrial strength, exception safe c++ code. It should be available for public beta Real Soon Now. Crawford just needs to deal with some legal matters (he was arrested in a civil rights protest so he's busy litigating that) first.

Re:Paging Archive.org

[Bomarc]

AC .. you beat me to it. How can we backup the skin / skin database before the web site shuts down?

Compatibility with input plug-ins

[tepples]

supports a lot of formats

The only reason I've used Winamp in the past few years is that most of the players for music formats related to classic game consoles have been released as input plug-ins for Winamp. Does XMPlay support NSF (NES), GBS (Game Boy and Game Boy Color), SPC (Super NES), SGC (ColecoVision and Sega), GYM/VGM (Sega logged), PSF (PS1), USF (PS2), GSF (Game Boy Advance), and 2SF (Nintendo DS)? On the XMPlay page, I see "Game Music Emu input plugin", which covers the NSF, GBS, SPC, SGC, GYM, and VGM, but not PSF and friends. What worries me more is that the page also states a policy of making the input plug-in SDK available only to approved developers: "The input plugin SDK is currently available only on request. If you would like to create an XMPlay input plugin, please get in touch."

Re:Compatibility with input plug-ins

[CronoCloud]

try XMMS, xmms2, qmmp, you do run Linux, right?

Where are they now?

[t0qer]

In case folks were wondering. Frankel and some of the original crew moved on to creating a DAW called Reaper flying under the company name Cockos.
www.reaper.fm

If Winamp is only worth $6m today, I'm pretty sure he could buy it back. There's so many things in reaper that have been missing in Winamp for years (namely good ASIO support, the ASIO output plugin for winamp stinks)

Re:Where are they now?

[Salgat]

At my internship we used Reaper to help with the development of stock amplifiers for Ford vehicles (I was at Visteon), this is pretty cool.

Re:Where are they now?

[t0qer]

Yah I've created some neat stuff with reaper. Being able to route tracks into silent tracks for audio signal triggering is tons of fun.

Re:Where are they now?

[CannonballHead]

I had no idea Reaper was made by the original WinAmp people. I love Reaper and own a paid license for it.

Re:Where are they now?

[Unknown Lamer]

Interesting... we used Reaper on my last tour actually. It replaced three guitar cabs, an ipod drummer, and a light controller with a laptop and a couple of hardware dsps and midi pedal boards... the Free Software nerd in me would have rather used Ardour and Guitarix and Hydrogen and a ton of custom programming, but it seemed like the evil proprietary solution worked better. Now that I know the authors behind that eeeeeeevil, I guess I know why it worked so well. Except for copying regions with automation around... (but Ardour3 is similarly obnoxious, so who can judge)

What about Shoutcast

[Kulfaangaren!]

Does anyone know if this means they are pulling the plug on Shoutcast as well ? It only says "...associated web services...".

Re:What about Shoutcast

[captjc]

God, I hope not. I love Shoutcast. I would be sad to see it go, though, to be fair, podcasting has pretty much taken over as my primary music and radio source.

Re:What about Shoutcast

[dysmal]

Ditto. I would be lost without Shoutcast. I've been streaming via Shoutcast for probably 10 years. Not too many ads. Lots of variety. Winamp is the reason why I hate iTunes. It's a player that just plays music and doesn't hijack my shit. RIP

What would be best for me?

[Bramlet Abercrombie]

I use winamp in my carputer. These days I keep a playlist of .flv music video files that I download from youtube. 7 inch screen and I have a mouse for control. I don't even know if winamp was even ever the best solutuion for me, but it seems to work OK. Should I stick with it or does anybody know something better. Running an atom 330 board btw.

And for linux

[future assassin]

there's DeadBeef

Re: And for linux

[nullchar]

And Audacious.

Re: And for linux

[Neil Boekend]

The name Banshee always appealed to me, but practically nothing beated Amarok IMHO (back when I ran Suse privately).

Re: And for linux

[kermidge]

Three cheers for Audacious. I've only around 7GB on drives, wanted a simple low-resource player that just works, and after trying the standards that came with a half-dozen distros and a few from the repos, settled on it for desktop listening. I don't need or use complicated playlists, catalogues, album art, none of it. For me it's the perfect player through my Sennheiser 130s (audio out and the headphones is all what I have for playback, not counting the "speakers" in my old laptop.)

R.I.P. Winamp. For most of a decade it was one of the earlier 'for me' installs on Windows, after all the protective and maintenance programs. It served my needs well, dependably and politely.

Damn it. I just got winamp for my droid phone

[Glooko_Archive]

And now I find out they are shutting down winamp. :( :( I got winamp working on the phone a few months ago for listening to web streams and live music events on Second Life.

Thinking back now I am pretty sure my first music player was winamp back around 1996-1997 as I had it before the Rurouni Kenshin fan-subs days and playing around with winamp theme displays.

A very sad day indeed. I most definitely would miss it as I streamed a lot of tech/talk shows off it over the years.

Re:Damn it. I just got winamp for my droid phone

[CronoCloud]

I got winamp working on the phone a few months ago for listening to web streams and live music events on Second Life.

For listening to streams, TuneIn has a slightly nicer UI, though it IS nice that Winamp can do it if you only have room for one application.

Plug-in installers; developer approval

[tepples]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

It supports winamp plugins.

That solves some the original problem I posed. Two problems remain: I imagine that these plug-ins' installers are looking for an installed copy of Winamp into whose plug-in folder to install the plug-in. How will they recognize XMPlay as a plug-in host compatible with plug-ins made for Winamp? And once the Winamp plug-in SDK disappears, how will developers of new input plug-ins for XMPlay ensure that the XMPlay team approves their request?

but,..

[Khashishi]

then who's going to whip the llama's ass?

Loved it but it didn't age well

[thetoadwarrior]

It was all I used but it just started feeling bloated and to be honest, a bit ugly. I prefer VLC at the moment and it works on any operating system which can't be said for Winamp.

Won't be available for download?

[neminem]

Like balls it won't, just go to oldversion.com or any of the other various sites like that. I love that site.

(I still use winamp, it's a great audio player. I'm pretty sure I'm still on the latest version 2 release, cause why shouldn't I be? It did everything I could want it to, and it did it well.)

Re:Shit sandwich people, OPEN WIDE.

[pixelpusher220]

Most other news outlets are based on facts though. Fox on the other hand, well, 'fact free' sums it up pretty well.

How long will that link still work?

[tepples]

That will work until AOL sends a notice of claimed infringement.

Re:How long will that link still work?

[NJRoadfan]

I'd say the bigger loss will be the listings of 3rd party plug-ins. More than just WinAmp support the plug-in API.

Re:How long will that link still work?

[toddestan]

That site has been hosting old versions of Winamp for years, so I doubt AOL would suddenly start caring, especially now. Though it may not be a bad idea to grab a few key versions.

DAE remember Sonique?

[Requiem18th]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player)

Skinned media players were awesome in the Windows 98 era. Nowadays OSs look fine enough that skins are a nuisance.

Re:DAE remember Sonique?

[rossdee]

Does Sonique still exist?

Perfect time to switch

[laurent420]

to Clementine: http://www.clementine-player.org/ Simple, effective, open source and very polished.

CORRECTION

[tepples]

PSF is for PS1 music, PSF2 is for PS2 music, and USF is for Nintendo 64 music.

Re:AOL should free winamp under free software lice

[captjc]

This is AOL, they would rather burn it to the ground and piss on the ashes than give anything to the public.

Will you people please stop whining?

[mmell]

Winamp will no longer be updated. Mildly annoying (unless some unknown network exploit renders the current version unsafe for use).

Winamp will no longer be available at www.winamp.com. Mildly annoying, but old software NEVER disappears from the internet. I can still get copies of many dead programs such as VersaCheck 1.0, DVD X-Copy, even M$ Flight Simulator. Licensing can prevent use of these old versions, but if you happen to have a valid license some basic google-fu should get you the installer (or installer ISO) you need.

Winamp will still run on the tens of thousands of systems that it's installed on. Users can continue to enjoy their digital music collection while thinking pleasantly about whipping a llama's ass. The icon will remain on the desktop. The Start Menu item will not disappear. MP3's will not magically be set to use a different default application to open.

In the end, I don't think this is going to cause any great deal of discomfort for the internet community. Hell, might not even get noticed right off (if not for /. shining a spotlight on it).

Re:Will you people please stop whining?

[NJRoadfan]

Anyone archiving the database of skins and plug-ins?

Re:Will you people please stop whining?

[CSMoran]

But you don't need a network exploit to worry. Secunia PSI routinely pointed out buffer overflows in how .mid files were handled in Winamp, prompting for an update. Now, I don't play .mid files, but if someone discovers an exploit like that in, say, how Winamp handles m4a or ogg files, with no dev to fix the security hole, how can you be sure your existing installation is not used to pwn your machine the next time you play a media file from teh internetz? Winamp hasn't changed much over the last few years, but at least they were patching security holes.

Damned AOL...

[LVSlushdat]

Damn.. the ONE good player for Windows that 1) plays Shoutcast streams withOUT any drama, and 2) doesnt try to force you to catagorize your music into that artist-album bullshit.. My several thousand mp3s are simply catagorized in folders by genre, and every other player seems to want to force me to throw that catagorization away and play *their* way.. Thats my main gripe with most all of the Linux music players, EXCEPT for XMMS/Audacious, which I exclusively use on Linux.. Winamp is more than happy to let me leave my music library the way *I* want it.. Gonna miss Winamp, wish AOL would Opensource it so the community could continue with it.. Oh well, a nice dream but *that* will never happen.. it *is* AOL we're talking about, after all.. Gonna download one last copy of Winamp and keep using it till the wheels fall off..

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[CronoCloud]

My EYES, the goggles, they do nothing. Had to tell it to use the default xmms skin. Yeah, I'm weird that way.

Re: I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's

[zevans]

No loss. As long as you use FLAC.

What a terrible birthday present!

[realilskater]

Thanks for all the good years. Keep whippin' the Llama's ass.

Free to obtain vs. free to RE-distribute

[tepples]

Just because software may be obtained without charge from the publisher doesn't mean that the publisher allows the software to be obtained without charge from other parties. The publisher might have good reasons to count downloads, such as if the product contains royalty-bearing technology (such as AAC or AVC or MP3 decoding) and the publisher is using the product as a loss leader.

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[Unknown Lamer]

Second class status? Works fine for me with an ancient xmms skin. About as well as xmms ever did at least.

Shoutcast DSP

[supertall]

Bummer, Winamp + Shoutcast DSP is perfect (and free) for broadcasting to Live365 and such (aside from stability issues - which now will never get fixed). MediaMonkey is close except for metadata updates.

On no

[maxcelcat]

I'm still a winamp user, in fact I've been using it since I ripped my first CD back in 1999. I detest iTunes with a passion, and have yet to find an alternative. Until I've never had a need to. I was even about to start writing some winamp plugins, mostly to display clever things on my LCD Smartie.

I wonder if there are any plans to release the source code? I'm sure there's a hardcore group of users and holdouts like me who'd look after it.

Winamp is old fashioned enough to allow me to manage my own files. My MP3 collection comes to work with me on an external drive. And I love the visualizations, as does my young son.

Curse you AOL, you destroyer of good things.

Re:Shit sandwich people, OPEN WIDE.

[epyT-R]

They all report facts. The spin is in which facts are presented and how they're correlated. They all do this because their ownership has a narrative they want viewers to accept as their worldview. The days of real news are long gone.

Can't register it anymore? :(((

[mysidia]

Clicking on the Media Players > Winamp Pro link gives me

"Winamp Pro Store not available"

Crowdfund the code's purchase, then open it

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

There's no way that AOL is going to just give away the code even if they're not currently planning on using it -- the best chance is to find out how much money they'd want in exchange for the source if the buyer'ssole intent is to crowdfund its purchase in order to open it for historical archiving & public use. Tech history orgs might even be willing to donate because of WinAmp's historical importance.

Someone with experience crowdfunding &handling the open-sourcing of proprietary projects should be involved, so the chance isn't blown by inexperience. For example, they might know whether AOL is more likely to agree to the sale if the logos/name or other elements are left out of the deal.

Re: I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's

[Anonymous Coward]

There is zero loss in FLAC. The original bitstream can always be recovered, no matter the compression setting chosen. It sounds like you have a problem with your expensive hardware, or a case of audiophile hallucination (no worries, it does get around).

Also, WAV is a container that can hold raw LPCM or any of a variety of lossy compressed streaming formats, so 'WAV works better' makes no sense.

I need therapy

[Chewbacon]

I'm really depressed over this. I've been using Winamp for about 14 years. It's one of the best software purchases I ever made. I still use it today over iTunes and I'm an idevice owner. A fellow geek recently laughed in surprise and nostalgia when he saw I still use Winamp. I'm no fan of AOL already, so it's an understatement for me to say I hate them for not open sourcing it.

Re:Verily, Winamp Did But Point the Way to iTunes

[scdeimos]

You haven't met the unholy abortion that is iTunes 11. Wish I could revert that update.

WTF will i use to stream?

[dadelbunts]

This makes me very very sad. Does this mean they will stop services such as Winamp Remore. I currently use it to stream music to my xbox because honestly there is nothing better. It saves and lists all my winamp playlists and is fast unlike WMP.

Re:AOL should free winamp under free software lice

[unixisc]

But they used to distribute all those free CDs, remember, which is how they ended up w/ such a huge installed base

this one is easy

[Skal Tura]

Ever since 2.96 it's been crappier by every version. I still usually download the 2.96 TO DATE, because the newer ones are such crap, bloated adware shit.

2.96 was simple, yet powerfull, enough features but not bloated. Worked as a MP3 player brilliantly.
Then came the stupid trying to play video shit (thus loosing your playlist), the GUI was changed to bloatware etc.

I did a mistake on last system setup -> i installed the latest. Now every now and then when watching netflix or videos on VLC -> it jumps out on top of everything. Yay, that's EXACTLY what i wanted.

WinAmp v2.91 lives on

[GodGell]

I'm surprised I seem to be the first to say,

Noooooooooooooooo! :(

Re:Paging Archive.org

[vlueboy]

AC .. you beat me to it. How can we backup the skin / skin database before the web site shuts down?

Skinning fills some kind of primal need to stand out and put your personal brand on something. I really feel sorry for those guys who just keep their default wallpapers, but there are lots nowadays. I recall back when Windows 95 and 98 Plus! theme packs allowed people to place sounds and cursors and interesting touches on their PC. Then, Win2k came out and all that was kinda dropped from our collective memory. Suddenly the only people offering you OS skins and sounds for events where Gator and other spyware friends, so I had to start warning people against customizing. Yet, custom skins were sort of the precursor to today's mainstream fad^Wwish to have custom ringtones, and they were awesome.

Windows Media Player has horrible skin support, and I never see people customizing it like Winamp owners. iTunes doesn't even... so it's true that Winamp kinda has no mainstream peer.

I keep revisiting Winamp due to playlist features and chiptune plugins. Back this summer I installed it again and looked forward to skinning it. I was disappointed at how inaccurate the skin search is now, and had to settle with a modified Aeris skin, rather than the classic I got a decade ago on the same site.

Soon, lots of unmaintained plugin repositories pointing to Winamp will leave people scratching their heads at the dead links. Google didn't help me find Aeris. It's one thing finding some EXE, and quite another to locate specific filenames for skins that are centrally uploaded. File lockers didn't exist back then, and most hosting from has died. I ended up finding a few interesting files in a geocities-type search result, but that thought is cringe-worthy. I fear again what will happen to today's internet. It is 100 times more prone to obfuscate things behind js calls and ephemeral third-parties that won't be around in 10 years.

Took way too long to edit this, but also opens my eyes to another thing: if the digital world is something that gets me so worked up, I need to turn away from it and find more tangible hobbies for my own good. The powers that be could be months away from clicking a switch blocking half of that stuff, and it will feel like the pain of losing our imaginary MMORPG chars after a services closes.

Doesn't surprise me...

[jonwil]

I use WinAmp because its a great media player and I dont listen to music on a portable device.

But for anyone with a portable device, they will likely be using the play-and-sync tools that come with the device/support the device, i.e. iTunes or Nokia PC Suite or whatever the various Android vendors are pushing with their phones.
Also if you are using a cloud music service like Google Music, Spotify, iCloud etc, WinAmp is irrelevant because you will be using the browser interface or native client for that service (whatever it might be).
And then for those not using a portable device OR a cloud music service, lots of them are probably using Windows Media Player because its the default and its there and they dont see a need for anything else. More of them are using something free (or open source) rather than WinAmp.

Then of course you have all the people who only ever downloaded the free version of WinAmp and never paid a cent for it.

ooh, let's think here

[ihtoit]

5.66 standard from the download page, or go pro 5.65 for free from the archive directory?

There's a no-brainer.

Would you fork a Lama?

[ALeader71]

Does anyone think WinAmp is a good open source candidate?

Re:I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's

[Joce640k]

I always downloaded the "Lite" version - no AOL crap there, just the original Winamp goodness.

oldapps.com FTW

[PJ6]

I stopped getting the latest version after 2.73. They started adding unnecessary crap from 3.0 onward, stuff that slowed down the interface and mucked up the layout. At one point I think they even included a malware toolbar with the install.

They're going to shut down "web services"? Who cares?

I'll be using 2.73 for another decade. Listening to all the music I downloaded using Napster.

Now get off my lawn.

Bummer

[Anabas]

I interviewed for a job with the winamp team several months ago - they had some pretty big plans for it. It's a shame that they didn't get them implemented.

never really liked it, won't really miss it

[marauder-2c]

the first versions i tried were pretty flawed, and ever since i found coolplayer i saw no reason to ever consider installing winamp again

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[xOneca]

If they're no longer going to make bussiness with WinAMP, they should make it OSS...

What about the streaming end?

[Shirley Marquez]

A popular use of Winamp is as a simple Shoutcast streaming server. Install the Shoutcast DSP plugin and you're ready to go. It's the simplest streaming setup around; once the stream information is in place and the stream is started, all you have to do is play your songs, and the song info (extracted from the ID3 tags in your files) is automatically sent as well.

There used to be a comparable solution for Foobar2000 - the Edcast plugin. (There was also a version for Winamp and a standalone program.) It was more work to install because you had to download and install some components separately (notably LAME if you wanted to stream MP3) but equally simple to use once it was set up. Sadly, the author of Edcast stopped distributing it about three years ago, though the old downloads can still be found on archive.org. A Sourceforce project to do a new version sprung up but never produced a stable program and it's been inactive for two years.

Rhythmbox?

[zeugma-amp]

I've tried lots of different mp3 players under Linux, but always eventually come back to rhythmbox. I've only got 18k songs or so, so I don't know how it handles larger loads. The thing that I like more than anything else, is how easy the search facility is to use. I mostly run it on a random walk, but if I want something specific, it is easy to find exactly what I want, either by artist, title, or album.

My biggest problem is getting it to exclude certain subdirectories for cataloguing.

Rumours that Microsoft is in talks with AOL

[suss]

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/21/source-microsoft-in-talks-to-buy-shoutcast-and-winamp-from-aol/

Re:Paging Archive.org

[kermidge]

You're right, and it's a broader thing. Tracking down a news story from even a few years ago is hit and miss; for things such as apps and files it can be worse. Sometimes universities maintain some odds and ends - last I looked, U of Mich (I think) still had probably the largest cache of Atari ST stuff, for instance. Websites come and go (yeah, such a wise observation, wasn't trying to be sage about it.)

My usual thing is to be reading, going about the day's agenda, follow a chain of links, find a neat site and say to self gotta go back there soon and read or download - then promptly forget. Some time later, maybe while organizing bookmarks, going back and... it's gone.

Grab it while you can. If you've the drive space, download the whole damn site. There's quite a gap between what the Archive can manage and what vanishes entire.

Open source!

[forrie]

They should open-source the code to Winamp.

WinAmp was about Internet Radio

[bcbilly]

WinAmp is still the best software to listen to internet radio. I loathe the trend for every internet radio station to have their own 56 kbps web client, or Android client. I suppose Shoutcast is going as well. I've tried to replace WinAmp many times, and I've always come back.

WinAMP

[EthanSullens]

You can download all the versions of this from oldversion.com

Re:the Winamp interface lives on!

[toddestan]

Are they any Winamp clones that also handle videos files? That's what I have been looking for and haven't found anything yet.

MusicMatch

[tingentleman]

Back to MusicMatch it is then...

Re: I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's

[Khyber]

You really have no idea how pitchshifters and fourier transforms work, do you. Oh, nor Nyquist-Shannon Theorem.

Everyone that modded me down doesn't have a fucking clue and hasn't been studying the effect for over a decade like I have.

RAW PCM WAV beats out FLAC, especially when a pitch-shifter is introduced into the equation. Then you can tell that 'lossless' compression is bullshit. Truly lossless would introduce no artifacting by simple change of pitch.

And thus FLAC is bullshit.

Re: I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's

[Khyber]

"There is zero loss in FLAC."

No, as if there were zero loss, a perfect pitch shifter wouldn't create artifacting that becomes apparent when you go more than a whole note up or down in pitch.

Sadly, every FLAC file does. Give it a shot and learn. Also, I can tell you right now that FLAC is lossy. I can pull thirty distinct waveforms out of a single note plucked on a guitar (look at your graph in AP Tuner.) FLAC can't encode every nuance of that, hence calling it lossless is sheer stupidity.

Youtube

[mtthwbrnd]

I listen to everything on youtube. It seems to have everything on there. Of course, Google are doing their best to destroy youtube with their stupid Google+ crap, so I don't know how long youtube will be a useful resource for.

Good words for WINAMP?

[kfedorov]

May be some of you have something to say about winamp for history: http://slashdot.org/submission/3149129/say-some-positive-things-about-winamp-for-history

Sorry if you don't like it..