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Winamp Shutting Down On December 20

Posted by Soulskill on from the llama-finally-whipped-back dept.

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."

32 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. FB2K FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Foobar2000 is great!

    1. Re:FB2K FTW by Russ1642 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:FB2K FTW by baka_toroi · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    3. Re:FB2K FTW by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:FB2K FTW by Hsien-Ko · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    5. Re:FB2K FTW by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:FB2K FTW by EvanED · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    7. Re:FB2K FTW by jimshatt · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    8. Re:FB2K FTW by jimshatt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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 :) ).

    9. Re:FB2K FTW by Nyder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Be seeing you...
    10. Re:FB2K FTW by locopuyo · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
    11. Re:FB2K FTW by almitydave · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
  2. A sad day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No more llama ass-whipping :(

    1. Re:A sad day by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:A sad day by Capt.DrumkenBum · · Score: 4, Informative

      AOL has a profitable business unit?!!

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

      --
      If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
  3. A victim of animal cruelty legislation... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  4. WinAMP still rocks by CanEHdian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --
    When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
    1. Re:WinAMP still rocks by dstyle5 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  5. Oh Man- My Lightshow by gnarfel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Local music(to upstate NY). http://gnarfel.com/ radio.
  6. Open source it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just do it.

    1. Re:Open source it. by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 5, Informative

      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!).

      --

      HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
  7. Here's to hoping... by Forbo · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Here's to hoping... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ...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.

  8. Re:I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your loss.

    --
    No sig today...
  9. Download Any Version of Winamp by bobbutts · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  10. Re:Huh? Color me confused. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:Shame on AOL by DigitAl56K · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  12. Re:Awww by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:Dang my luck by unixisc · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can you buy Windows 8.1 for your PC/laptop?

  14. Re: I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's by zevans · · Score: 4, Funny

    No loss. As long as you use FLAC.

    --
    "... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
  15. Re:Aimp is a great replacement by svobodniy · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  16. Re:so what should i be using now? by Calydor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-