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Vivendi Takes Over Radionomy, Winamp Relaunch Now Possible (windowsreport.com)
SmartAboutThings writes: Winamp could once again be brought back to life after Vivendi Group took over the majority stake in Radionomy, the previous owner of the app who purchased it from AOL in early 2014. AOL originally planned to discontinue both Winamp and Shoutcast, but instead the company decided to sell the software to Belgian online radio service, Radionomy. The new owners initially promised that they'll keep Winamp alive, but no updates have been released since the takeover, which made most people think that Winamp era has ended for good. Vivendi Group, which owns or is involved in famous companies such as Dailymotion, Ubisoft, and Deezer, could help relaunch Winamp, although the press release announcing the acquisition offers no suggestion in this regard. The company, however, does mention Winamp and Shoutcast as two of the most important assets that will join its portfolio following the takeover.
Winamp, it really whips the Llama's ass!
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOO! MOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU LLAMA'S ASS COWS!!
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is their best property by far! That game is one of the greatest ever made. The Ubisoft version of HOMM3 Complete that ran on Windows 7 could be found at Half Price Books a few years ago for $6. A steal.
Honestly, what more does Winamp need? For what most people who still use it want to do with it, it works just fine. Vivendi being involved in it means it'll probably promptly be ruined and made into some type of iTunes clone with a metric shit-ton of bloat and do half-a-million things in a mediocre fashion. As for Shoutcast, it also does what it's supposed to do: stream audio.
The fact that a company owned the product and was doing nothing in particular with it was, to me, a good thing.
This is about as relevant as someone resurrecting Trumpet Winsock. Sure, Winamp was great in its time, but there are so many other options now that are as good or better that it would just get lost in the shuffle.
Vivendi also acquired UMG and most of EMI over the last decade or so.
Winamp, EMI and Universal Music Group under one roof... how times have changed.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
So what? WinAmp was great at the dawn of the MP3 era, but it's caveman primitive by today's standards.
Reviving WinAmp at this late stage is completely pointless, in my mind.
So it just will not be right until it has a new flat interface design? I think you need to read the UI/UIX thread. http://news.slashdot.org/story...
probably not at this point. I think Winamp has come and gone for good.
I strongly believe that Shoutcast is the more important of the two applications here, and likely the reason for the acquisition. There are approximately a zillion interchangeable client players / music library managers, but Shoutcast and other compatible programs like icecast are dominant in the indie-scale internet radio space. There are tons of clients (one open source example - Butt) that can broadcast using the original Soundcast system. I liked Winamp long back in the day, but I do think Shoutcast is the more important news here.
I have experience: I co-founded http://houseofsound.org - and they are still using Icecast to broadcast their streams.
I guess it does demonstrate the enduring power of a marque though. Sure, WinAmp hasn't been relevant for ages, but people still remember it. I remember even making a skin for the music player I used on my PocketPC PDA (gsplayer I think it was) to make it look like WinAmp, mustv'e had way too much time on my hands.
Sure, it's hard to see how WinAmp could be brought back to prominence. Certainly not in the same form as it was; if you want that, just download the old versions. But it's not impossible; I can't say I'm 100% happy with the music players I use, the online radio apps I use, or the streaming services on the market. So there's room for someone to do better, and if it happened to have the WinAmp name attached it wouldn't hurt.
Oh no... it's the future.
I would leave iTunes in a short minute if WinAmp provided syncing capabilities to my iPhone and iPad, without all that bullshit sales and marketing gimmickry.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Winamp could once again be brought back to life
Uh, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
Oh wait, in other news... with fossil fuel scarcity looming, demand for blacksmiths to make more horseshoes than usual is expected. And with systemd's widespread adoption, it's looking like PDP-8's are going to be the new server of choice for many enterprises and small businesses alike.
Winamp remained relevant throughout the ages. Issue companies and shills take with it is that it's not monetizeable, simply because it's a perfectly working product that doesn't need any major updates and isn't dependent on developer's servers.
It just works on user's computer, and remains among the best if not the best audio player on windows to date.
It just works on user's computer, and remains among the best if not the best audio player on windows to date.
I'm using vlc to play music now. It plays everything that I want to play and then some. Very rarely but still occasionally I run into something that winamp won't play.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I remember in 1997-98 or so, shoutcast + winamp was the latest greatest thing. Stream from your own connection! Have your own radio station! I did it, too. I had a reasonably popular shoutcast station that had around 20 people connected at any one time. Then, there was icecast, which was the open source version. What happened with that?
I just remember that my 20 users was enough to keep me high enough in the standings on the shoutcast.com web page, but what happened was these losers started creating thousands of loopback connections to their own station so that it appeared they had thousands of listeners. Then they bumped all the legitimate users like me out of the rankings. They weren't all home users, either, there were radio stations in Czech and Brazil with "thousands" of users. I listened to a few of them...why would anyone ever tune in? Crappy music followed by ads in a foreign language. After a while I got bored and ended my station. I just assumed that I had been an early adopter and shoutcast would be taking of soon, but it never happened. What happened instead? Anyone know?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There's Audacious which has a winamp skin/mode and respects the users freedom.
Dude! Foobar2000 for music! Best damn music player in existence (for Windows).
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
There are already a number of comments saying things to the effect of "this doesn't matter because winamp is outdated and there are much better alternatives."
So as someone who still uses WinAmp, what are those alternatives and how are they better?
I still use winamp because it's simple and efficient at what i want it to do. It works with the library of mp3 files i have (supposedly it also handles flac, but i my ears aren't good enough to require using up that much drive space) without requiring me to connect to some service. It allows me to create and save playlists with ease using the "Media Library." In theory it allows me to update the music on my phone though i usually just do that manually. (Copy m3us and new mp3s by hand.)
The shuffle is kind of a joke, but i'm not sure that any music player has really "perfected" shuffle. (I'm not sure it's even possible to meet human expectations of what "random" ought to be in this context.)
I generally use VLC to watch videos, but i find its Media Library and playlist editor much less intuitive than winamp, though that admittedly might just be due to relative use. However so far i have not discovered any features in VLC that would make it a superior music player and thus prompt me to get more practice using it for that purpose.
So again, what are the newer, better alternatives, and what features do they offer that winamp lacks?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I tried VLC for my mp3s awhile back (I still use it for videos, of course). I could never figure out why, but it always pinned my CPU, even if I turned visualizations off.
Switched to foobar after that, but I still miss WinAmp's simplicity.
foobar2000 is now whipping the llama's ass. I haven't looked back since I started using it.
Czech? Brazil? It seems you were the foreigner.
Me too
(On mobile so forgive me for not copying every post in this thread.)
But seriously - 2.9whatever is stable. Every other software I've tried has been one or more of the following:
Have a look at Digitally Imported.
So what? WinAmp was great at the dawn of the MP3 era, but it's caveman primitive by today's standards.
Reviving WinAmp at this late stage is completely pointless, in my mind.
WinAmp was ahead of its time in terms of functionality and is still somewhat impressive even by today's standards. That being said since WinAmp & Shoutcast are now owned by Vevendi, the parent corporation of Universal it would be wise to completely avoid WinAmp, that is if Vevendi didn't buy them just to bury them. What they will do to it will be attach all sorts of malware along with plenty of digital restrictions management to maker it quite bloated and useless, and that is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Universal was responsible for many legal messes, MP3.COM included. Because of that WinAmp is now quite irrelevant, no matter how useful it is or isn't. Best thing to do is boycott the new WinAmp along with everything Vivendi and go with a FLOSS solution to play media files instead.
I have a basic media player using fmod that I designed but don't share. I've been using it for over a decade because I didn't like windows media player or winamp and there were really no other competition at the time.
Winamp has taken me through Junior High, High School, College, and Beyond. I've seen countless media players come and go, but all I need is trusty Winamp with my personally-edited Receiver skin (original artist Timo Henke, year 2001). Sure the new programs do all this fancy stuff, but all I need is a nice simple player for my tunes with convenient Windows Explorer folder integration. Hard to believe it's been 18 years of near-daily usage. Keep on rockin' with Winamp in the Geek world!
Most went to Justin.tv and evolved into TWITCH.TV. Totalbiscuit started on shoutcast.
That's like using a truck for daily commute. Uncomfortable, dysfunctional and way too costly.
If you need extra features in addition to playback, you use foobar2000. If you just want playback, you use winamp.
Winamp is now reported as a security flaw by uninformed robotic DHI resources..
Move along, nothing to see here..
Because we are so lame we dont, cant, or simply dont wish to understand as we try our best to deflate the edifice that is slashdot inorder to get a quick sale since we blunderfucked the last one..
While I agree, this is news for nerdz, its speculative, has no conclusion, and because its reported by DHI severly diminished/marginalized.
Too bad I found it here first, even worse now severly lacking credibility..
way to re-post samzenpus, do you actually engage others witch such lacking?
I still run a icecast station. It's listed by Tune-in and many android radio apps have it listed. Dude Suit Radio
I quit doing anything the the website as I had no ideas and blog was boring. But I keep the radio stream up. I wrote the script that DJ's it in perl, no ads on the stream.
been running several years
This: http://www.foobar2000.org/
Mod parent up. I loved Winamp, but ditched it for foobar2000 when it started becoming too much like Windows Media Player. foobar2000 Made by a guy who worked on Winamp stuff for a bit.
"foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Piotr 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 (Software development kit) 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 Three-Clause BSD license." (Source: wikipedia)
Absolutely love this metaphor! Very much my experience as well
I listen to pre-recorded radio shows and I like the fact that I can dock Winamp at the top of the screen with hiding it from view until the mouse comes close to the top of the screen. Can Foobar 2000 do that?
http://audacious-media-player....
"Audacious runs on Linux, on BSD derivatives, and on Microsoft Windows."
"Audacious is an open source audio player. A descendant of XMMS, Audacious plays your music how you want it, without stealing away your computerâ(TM)s resources from other tasks. Drag and drop folders and individual song files, search for artists and albums in your entire music library, or create and edit your own custom playlists. Listen to CDâ(TM)s or stream music from the Internet. Tweak the sound with the graphical equalizer or experiment with LADSPA effects. Enjoy the modern GTK-themed interface or change things up with Winamp Classic skins. Use the plugins included with Audacious to fetch lyrics for your music, to set an alarm in the morning, and more."
There's also a "Qt port".
#####
Then there's Clementine:
http://www.clementine-player.o...
"Search and play your local music library.
Listen to internet radio from Spotify, Grooveshark, SomaFM, Magnatune, Jamendo, SKY.fm, Digitally Imported, JAZZRADIO.com, Soundcloud, Icecast and Subsonic servers.
Search and play songs you've uploaded to Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive
Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
CUE sheet support.
Play audio CDs.
Visualisations from projectM.
Lyrics and artist biographies and photos.
Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC.
Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organise your music.
Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz.
Discover and download Podcasts.
Download missing album cover art from Last.fm and Amazon.
Cross-platform - works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Native desktop notifications on Linux (libnotify) and Mac OS X (Growl).
Remote control using an Android device, a Wii Remote, MPRIS or the command-line.
Copy music to your iPod, iPhone, MTP or mass-storage USB player.
Queue manager."
I am a little concerned about the takeover of Radionomy. That's my main source of music on the intertubes and I'm hoping Vivendi doesn't decide that changes need to be made and eff that up.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I've used Winamp since about 1998 or so, and while i've tried others (recently tried Groove), I always go back to Winamp since it just works and can easily manage my music library that I have collected for 18 or so years.
But I am really interested to see how it will change if it does. I mean, a lot of the passion of Winamp development died out in 2004 when Justin Frankel, the creator left. I am not saying that the team after him hasn't done a good job maintaining it and adding upgrades, but it seems like there was no large steps forward. In fact their version 5.7 beta what was going to include a music locker seemed like a good step forward but it was dropped when AOL announced the sale of Nullsoft.
One one hand I am excited to see how it will be changed, but on the other hand I hope it's not too drastic. I do know one thing that was holding back the development was the backward compatibility for plug-ins, which Winamp3 was supposed to end. Plus I can see a lot of old time users whining about losing their favorite dancing baby visual plugin or whatever.
Regardless, DJ Egg has been playing with a new alpha, so it is in development, hopefully something will happen with Winamp.
As for Shoutcast, I can't remember the last time I used it, besides temporarily setting up streams. since Digitally Imported went web/app based, and BlueMars shut down, I haven't been big on discovering new radios...
Leave it buried. It's not relevant anymore.
with mp3.com; I'm not the least bit worried.
*starts archiving all the winamp content he can.*
That's like using a truck for daily commute. Uncomfortable, dysfunctional and way too costly.
You haven't driven a modern truck, have you? They drive like a car, and they've got very comfortable seats. The only problem is the mileage. Thing is, if we may shift out of that metaphor, my low-end machine is a septa-core with 8GB of RAM. VLC is not an undue burden. I have it installed already. I like the interface fine. So just like someone who already owns a nice truck and then gets a job a ways away, I'm going to use what I've got and what I already use rather than install another piece of software and have to track its updates.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's nothing strange about the lack of updates, anyone having read the Winamp forums (alive through all this) knows that they had to remove large parts of the AOL code and had already announced a very tentative 2015 re-release date. They've started alpha builds recently, so everything is proceeding smoothly.
That's another beauty of winamp. It just works. It needs no updates. At all.
Most people clearly have forgotten what it's like, to have piece of software that is actually functionally finished and works just fine.
--If you like WinAmp on Windows, try the DEADBEEF player for Linux -- similar interface and features; comes with a large multi-band Equalizer, and plays .ogg files and .mod(.it, .s3m, .xm, etc) files out of the box.
http://deadbeef.sourceforge.ne...
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??