Slashdot Mirror
What Happened To Winamp? (arstechnica.com)
Winamp was released more than 20 years ago, and last week marked the 15th anniversary of the release of Winamp3. An anonymous Slashdot reader tries to explain what finally happened to Winamp:
AOL planned to discontinue Winamp in November of 2013, but instead sold it to the Belgian online radio service Radionomy. The last update on Winamp's Twitter account was September of 2015, though it announced that they were looking for a new senior C++ developer. Then in December of 2015 Vivendi Group became that company's majority shareholder, stirring hopes that the company might one day launch a revamped version of the classic mp3 player from 1997.
So did they? Radionomy's Winamp page is still showing download links -- though they now lead instead to a forum post which says "code licensed to the previous owner" is being removed or replaced. But that post has been updated five times -- as recently as last October -- with "info about the next Winamp release," each linking to a thread on Winamp's forums which offer tantalizing glimpses into a still-ongoing development process. And last October a Winamp dev posted on Twitter that "a Winamp 5.8 public beta release could be imminent," while the web page at Winamp.com still says "There's more coming soon," with a background image of a llama.
"There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition," their first general manager told Ars Technica in 2012. (Winamp's developers had been earning $100,000 a month just from $10 shareware checks before AOL acquired the company in 1999 for $100 million.) In May TechRadar wrote that Winamp "is still a great media player...but it now relies on third-party extensions to add features found as standard in more modern players."
I still remember all the visualizations and custom skins -- but does this bring back any memories for anyone else? Leave your thoughts in the comments. And what mp3-playing software are you using today?
So did they? Radionomy's Winamp page is still showing download links -- though they now lead instead to a forum post which says "code licensed to the previous owner" is being removed or replaced. But that post has been updated five times -- as recently as last October -- with "info about the next Winamp release," each linking to a thread on Winamp's forums which offer tantalizing glimpses into a still-ongoing development process. And last October a Winamp dev posted on Twitter that "a Winamp 5.8 public beta release could be imminent," while the web page at Winamp.com still says "There's more coming soon," with a background image of a llama.
"There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition," their first general manager told Ars Technica in 2012. (Winamp's developers had been earning $100,000 a month just from $10 shareware checks before AOL acquired the company in 1999 for $100 million.) In May TechRadar wrote that Winamp "is still a great media player...but it now relies on third-party extensions to add features found as standard in more modern players."
I still remember all the visualizations and custom skins -- but does this bring back any memories for anyone else? Leave your thoughts in the comments. And what mp3-playing software are you using today?
I couldn't stand itunes's bloat and insistence on taking control of my media files/directories.
Winamp forever, itunes never.
This basically took over Winamp's userbase.
"I still remember all the visualizations and custom skins -- but does this bring back any memories for anyone else?"
Memories? I still use it.
I don't know what these supposed "Features" it doesn't have that are in modern players are but I don't want them. What I want is something that sits in one line at the top of my screen and plays music. It's still Winamp for that and has been since 1997.
Still capable of amazing me with some great effects that perfect on many occasions.
Really whipped it's ass...baaaa....baaarrrr!
(nt)
I side-load it on my phone. I also have a VM running Shoutcast, so I can stream music from my collection across my wifi. I love Dronezone for specific types of meditations, and Space Station Soma is really good too. Especially after a few bottles of Robitussin LOL
at least the w.a. i remember. i can't see it working on a modern hirez display. even 10 yrs ago it had itty bitty vizualz making it too hard to use/see unless you dbl pixeled it. the third version, too.
Still use it. I could go on, but it feels like this Winamp story shows up a couple times a year.
It uses a tiny amount of RAM, a tiny amount of CPU, supports tons of plugins, global hotkeys, and more. I would "upgrade" but I've never actually seen a player that's an improvement. Why would I use a "newer" tool if the newer tool isn't functionally better than the old one? Playing an MP3 shouldn't take more than 16 MB of RAM or >0.0% CPU. End of story.
Thank God ONE software package hasn't become a bloated piece of crap that requires 15 seconds to load and 1 GB of RAM to load a freakin' word document.
Is what happened to WinAmp. The truth is that the vast majority of people now use their mobile phone to listen to music and not their laptop or desktop. The trend started with the iPod and was accelerated by the phone. As flash capacity increased it has been ever pushed further down the line. As such the market for audio players on your computer has larg
You can get 400 albums on a 64GB microSD using 256kbps MP3 and still have plenty of room to spare for photos. It's not like 128 and 200GB+ microSD are extortionate either.
That said the Linux clone xmms suffered the same issue, a massive "redesign" that destroyed it and even qmmp seems to be dead. For me neither are any use now I have a HiDPI display which is a shame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel
Works flawlessly on my Windows 10 laptop. Been using the same version since it was released 15 years ago (August 21, 2002). By far THE BEST audio playback software I've used...better than all the other crap available these days.
For the rest of the world, there is XMMS (www.xmms.org/) which is the same thing, done better.
In the mid-1990s I was determined to quit using Windows, so I switched to BSD & GNU/Linux, almost exclusively the last 10+ years. I like Open Cubic Player, DeadBeef, XMMS (v1, but can't get it,) Audacious
I personally have no memory of Winamp. I have drunk a whole lot of alcohol since I last had that installed on any machine.
And if you do have memories of Winamp I would suggest they're just implants.
Implants. Those aren't your memories, they're somebody else's. They're Tyrell's niece's,,,,,. Ok. Bad joke. I made a bad joke. You're not a Replicant. Go home. Ok? No really, I'm sorry. Go home."
The SUPER stupid part is AOL did this a lot. They bought up a lot of innovative companies and squeezed the life and individuality out of them and stifled their potential. Want to know how dumb it got? AOL forced all their subsidiaries to migrate their email systems to use the AOL client because of course they did.
""There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,""
Yeah, except the Apple Music Store, the iPod and how Steve Jobs was the largest shareholder of Disney after the Pixar Acquisition so he could strong arm music companies ... yeah, sure why not?
its been dead since AOL. FooBar 2000 is where its at.
linux still doesnt have a decent music player,lol. i use VLC when i have to.
Go to oldversions,
Winamp it really whips the Llama's ass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaF-nRS_CWM
Winamp was required to play mp3 files on Windows in the late 90s because Windows Media player did not support the codec. This allowed Winamp to grow as a successful product, up until Microsoft started bundling Windows Media Player 7 with Windows. Since WMP7 had support for mp3, most people just used that, simply because that's what mp3 files opened in when they double clicked on them. This lead to a rapid decline in Winamp users, and thus through the illegal practice of bundling Microsoft was able to abuse its Windows monopoly to kill off another competitor.
Bundling is an illegal practice for trust companies, and it always amazes me that they were able to get away with this with no investigation at all. It's not the only time Microsoft has used its bundling of Windows Media Player to its advantage. With WMP9 Microsoft added the VC-1 codec as a competitor to h.264. VC-1 was supposed to offer lower royalty payments to h.264, while offering similar performance, but once all patents were assessed the royalty payments turned out to be the same as h.264, so VC-1 offered no advantage at all to the incumbent codec. However, Microsoft used its Windows monopoly and bundled WMP application to push VC-1, and they were so successful they managed to get VC-1 included in with the Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards. Some early Blu-rays from Warner used VC-1, but the quality was noticeably inferior to h.264, and thus it is rarely, if ever, used for Blu-rays now. However, thanks to its monopoly abuse anyone who buys a Blu-ray player is paying money to Microsoft because all Blu-ray players have to support VC-1.
I still use it
I still install it on my friends computer
I'm sure everyone using Windows has been met with an NSIS installer, the Nullsoft installer system, originally built for WinAmp, but opened to the public. Amazingly, NSIS is still in use, despite being based on a terrible language and overall carrying lots of risks of making bad installers that can break things.
What else would I be using?
I tend to rant.
Winamp all the way. I'm really bummed I cannot buy the Pro version anymore.
My money is no good?
I use banshee, but only because of inertia.
I have ~8000 songs and Banshee takes forever to start up. Upon startup I get a grey shell of the main window for about 5 seconds before anything happens.
Other than that, it seems to work fine.
This happens with the same music collection among several computers and recurs about a week or so after wiping out the config files.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
It really whips the llama's ass.
I still use it. It's fast and doesn't contain much of the junk there is out there today, and I don't need a full blown application to sync my music.
The original developer, Justin Frankel went on start a new company "Cockos" ( http://cockos.com/ ) after leaving AOL to develop a professional multi-track digital audio workstation named Reaper ( http://reaper.fm/ ).
Here's his personal site on his updates:
http://1014.org/
Reaper's window's only (although it runs on Wine), but lately he's been working on porting it to Linux, in a world where digital workstations are for the most part, Mac and Windows only. Audio drivers for professional-grade analog-digital audio interfaces are still lacking, but having a pro-grade application is a start. Plus he seems to be linking Valgrind a lot, which is helping him detect memory leaks easier.
Audacious does most of the things winamp did. Can even be made to look almost exactly like it. Even has plugins like winamp.
I switched to iTunes, I found that WinAmp was too lean and clean. It started up so quickly that I'd have to shut it down and start it up again just to make sure. And then when I was playing MP3s with WinAmp, there was so little CPU usage that I couldn't be sure that the software was actually doing anything. Both of these problems were quickly fixed with iTunes.
I was also disappointed in WinAmp not being the way to backup and restore my phone, copy music to a mobile device, buy movies online, catch up on a few seasons of TV shows and automatically transcode to AAC when copying MP3s to my iPod. You know, I just really want a media player that forces itself into my life in strange and unusual ways.
"There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today
Are the two that comparable? Winamp's a media player. iTunes is a front-end for a store and a device manager.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Phew, no, it's still there, playing ma MP3s. Why are you trying to scare me?
I still use winamp when I need sound quality. Mainly because of two plugins. - Stereotool (https://www.stereotool.com, I use the paid pro version) - SqrSoft-Advanced Crossfading (http://sqrsoft.com.ar/downloads.html, free) If only Spotify or the competition would finally offer winamp-compatible plugins...
I ditched it around the time they decided it needed to play video, burn CDs and have a fucking integrated browser.
The original XMMS is still my favorite, although no linux distros include it anymore due to possible security issues. Whichever of those A ones still includes the classic xmms skin I use when it isn't available. Another bonus to XMMS was its ability to play web radio streams back in the early '00s. I used it to listen to virgin radio uk back before they discontinued their open format web streams to listen to Estelle(Garnet on Steven Universe for anyone who hasn't heard of her.) before she was getting airtime in the US.
Personally though, I just migrated all my music to a cheap android cellphone bought as an mp3 player replacement, sideloaded with f-droid and Vanilla Player, and have called that enough for the past 3-5 years. It has playlist support, various shuffle options, can play both midi and mp3/ogg/flac, although I don't think it plays some/all modfiles.
That covers pretty much everything I want to listen to though!
Free or paid, Spotify or Amazon, it's just so much easier to use a streaming service. So it's less Winamp vs iTunes than players vs streaming...
>"And what mp3-playing software are you using today?"
Audacious [under Linux], of course. And guess what skin? Refugee Winamp 2! :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a very important part of history, at least for me and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Saying it could have been what iTunes is today is really an insult, iTunes is still no where near as good as Winamp was. It just didn't have the stupid bloat and has far superior music list management. Not to mention being 100th the size.
One story -- I remember when my 486DX2/66 could not decode mp3s fast enough for real-time playback. i think that was with winamp.
VLC can handle almost anything. It has versions for Windows and Linux and iOS and Android. it can mount an SMB share, and stream and convert and play a 1080p mkv on an ipad air 2 without stuttering. and its music player on windows and android is fantastic.
So too bad Winamp.
List all the fucking music!
Allow you to click a track and know whether it was going to play now or queue the track next.
Something itunes seems to fuck up on purpose.
And back in the day it was the only convenient tool to rip CDs until Audiograbber came along. It is still a great player, but limited. I defected to VLC that plays about everything.
...the llama's ass?
It's dead, Jim.
WinAmp is history, Foobar2000 is the future ...
now, if only there was a Unix port
It comes down to simply playing the media files and being quick and reliable. All the rest is just useless crap.
Now that you know that I like SMPlayer - LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE!
It seems like Winamp was really good but then got more and more bloated, I don't want that happening to SMPlayer
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
The best thing about the original XMMS was not only its ability to play streams but RECORD them while playing them.
I still miss that player and there hasn't been anything equivalent since. All the "replacements" are complicated, fat bloated pigs, and don't even have the same features.
Winamp - it really whips the llama's ass!
Not sure about everyone else but for me what replaced winamp was mpd with ncmpcpp on my desktop and laptop and Google Music on mobile. This let's me access my library either locally with mpd clients or remotely by pushing it all to Google Music and using their player.
I haven't really used winamp since the early to mid 2000s. That's when the iPod hit and then I used Songbird which USED to be able to sync media to your iPod. Then I jumped from that to Google Music around 2011 and mpd for local access at home. If Google decides to "pull a Reader" and discontinue Google Music I'd probably switch to Subsonic (good mobile apps) or Shoutcast or something.
I switched to MediaMonkey a long time ago. Handles file management well, nice interface, and converts non-native file types (I store in flac format) to iPod compatible versions on the fly when syncing with an iPod/iPad, etc...
Aimp is the closest I found (http://www.aimp.ru/)
Fubar2000 not as refined as Aimp but seems to be more extensible (https://www.foobar2000.org/)
Why pick, I run both.
Your question seems to legitimize .MP3, it implies that it's the only format that people would ever use to play music. While you may well be right that it's what a majority of people use, you just made me very sad realizing how hopeless it is to try and get people to care about listening to music that has decent sound quality in lossless formats when most of us never have issues like running out of storage space anymore.
This is not to say that mp3 isn't a perfectly appropriate choice on personal portable audio devices that we use with earbuds while 'on the go', because it's totally suited for that.
But in the case of WinAmp and since this was a desktop app, there is a good number of us who actually have high-end audio interfaces with audiophile-grade D/A converters connected to large speaker systems, in which case such a choice of audio format arguably can and does make a difference.
To answer the question, foobar2000 is so superior to anything else out there, it seems like the natural inheritor of all of the endlessly customizable features that made Winamp such a cool program to use back in the day. foobar2000 is capable of playing back any format known to man, including, FLAC, APE, ISO images of DVD-A, SACD and many other exotic formats, yet isn't encumbered by all of the bloat that has turned iTunes into such a dog for anything serious like dealing with very large music libraries.
Even if Winamp was to be released today, it would have a very hard time catching up to the amount of extensibility and customization that plugins currently offer to foobar2000 and given its recent history would likely come as a freebie bundled with all sorts of toolbar installers and other sponsored crapware.
Incidentally, and for anyone running OS-X, WineBottler allows for foobar2000 to run very smoothly, and I assume it's the same for Linux. Which means that using such a solution would probably would also work for Winamp under OS-X...
is what I use on Linux. It is called a descendany of XMMS, supports winamp skins and can sit in one line at the top of your screen (which seems to be a wanted feature).
I was there from the start with Winamp. Wrote addons, Creates Skins, Ran a online Station with Shoutcast and released/used their NSIS on so many projects I can not remember. Then it all died. Better things came out. Memories, yes. I have them and they were great.
try xmms, or qmmp, or audacious, (oops those are Linux apps) maybe you can switch to Linux too
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
VLC took over and it can do movies and tv and even stream
ya open source wil win eventually
Recently (well, January) added the Shoutcast channel on my Roku. Fantastic. Much better than Spotify, imo. :)
Haven't played with WinAmp in over 8 years (didn't re-install when I upgraded my WinXP to Win7 back then and now that machine finally pooped and bought a Win8.1 which I upgraded to Win10). Still, I do like Shoutcast and a brain cell reminded me of Shoutcast and I decided to do a search to see if they still exist and indeed they do. :)
Used it for many years, but in the age of ubiquitous mobile, IoT, and declining desktop numbers I don't think the market is there. Playing music is such a trivial operation nowadays, potentially spread across multiple clients, I think the notion that winamp could become relevant today is like saying a desktop clock could as well.
I had purchased it, but was deeply disappointed in the web bloat. I simply didn't need hot button links to bands I happen to be listening to. Now I rarely fire it up since I rarely want my desktop playing music.
it died a grueling death like all windoze only software...
Now I use an iPhone and can't stand their built in player. If you pause a long file like an audiobook it won't remember after a while and start at the beginning or just pick another file all together.
Ultraplayer: 2MB download, 8MB ram, 0% cpu
I went looking for something better when I saw Media Player taking one-third of my CPU (at the time). Found Ultraplayer. Never changed.
I come here for the love
The Llama, which had been ignoring it for years, suddenly turned around and whipped *its* ass. Winamp hasn't been seen or heard from since.
VLC is what Winamp could have been had the AOL takeover not happened. For the most part, it just works, has little "visualizations" if you want them, is the right price for entry, and runs on most OS's. There's even a phone version (though the Windows Store flavor kind of sucks; haven't checked Android).
Ultimately, though, besides AOL, what killed Winamp was Apple. Since nothing else would run on an iPod (later iAnything) it legitimized the proprietary stuff and locking out alternatives.
Fedora and Slackware still ship it. ./slackware64/xap
rpm -qa|grep xmms
xmms-faad2-2.7-8.fc25.x86_64
xmms-1.2.11-27.20071117cvs.fc25.x86_64
xmms-libs-1.2.11-27.20071117cvs.fc25.x86_64
xmms-normalize-0.7.7-11.fc25.x86_64
xmms-flac-1.3.2-1.fc25.x86_64
xmms-pulse-0.9.4-17.fc24.x86_64
slapt-get --show xmms
Package Name: xmms
Package Mirror: http://slackware.mirrors.tds.n...
Package Priority: Official
Package Location:
Package Version: 1.2.11-x86_64-5
I use WinAMP/Foobar under Windows and Audacious/Juk under Linux.
I would have used Juk everywhere and for everything but it's abandoned and it doesn't support streaming audio.
As for their time shares it'll be: Juk 48% (my audio library), Audacious 48% (streaming audio), WinAMP 2% and Foobar 2%. I guess you can easily see that I don't use Windows much.
... long ago to get to an Axis camera with sound at an open mic venue.
The downside is that the Gentle User had to know how to download and implement the piece of crap, so the audience was limited.
I played, "In The Early Morning Rain," by Canada's greatest, Gordon Lightfoot.
Now we use Facebook Live.
For mp3, I use my iPhone.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I see a lot of posts praising WinAMP for avoiding bloat, but software bloat is actually the reason I stopped using it. It started off as this super streamlined player which could handle nearly every format you could throw at it. Then it started adding unnecessary features, then the UI became complicated with sliding out panels and hidden screens, then they added a built in web browser? It started slowing down, taking up memory, and generally didn't act like a streamlined player any more.
Then I found VLC. It doesn't have the visual polish WinAMP had, but it is a an efficient player which doesn't try to be everything on my computer. The ONLY thing I miss from WinAMP is the randomise playlist feature. I used to load up a big playlist, randomise it, and then play it in sequence from start to finish. All other players I've found so far do NOT have this feature. Sure, they'll play a playlist in random order, but you can get repeats this way. Still, that's a tiny quibble.
Avatar of the God(s) Random
After a while they chose to really fuck up the interface and make it difficult to use older skins, plus now there's high DPI monitors that wouldn't play well with it
Shame we lose all the plugins
I like how Nullsoft gave away the full version of Winamp for free just before AOL shut them down. Version 5.6.6.3516 (aka: version 5.666) is one of the best versions ever, and I still use it every day.
I don't respond to AC's.
http://forums.winamp.com/showt... mind you it was shoutcast related.
I remember when I figured out how to use wwwamp https://github.com/royrico/hal... and several .pls files to have automatic DJ source switching when it required custom solutions back then although never did write it up so can't remember off hand what I did.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
didn't Winamp even start charging money for the program? AIMP sure doesn't, and has replaced Winamp in every way.
Clementine works for me - even has some visualisations, and plays FLAC files.
"There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition," their first general manager told Ars Technica in 2012.
You mean it could be a fat, bloated piece of shit with a miserable, fucked-up design and a craptastic UI?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The ship has sailed for Winamp. I loved it; it was my first and only MP3 player. I've since happily dumped Windows for the Mac platform.
I don't believe Winamp is even technologically relevant today, save for nostalgia. While I'm not privy to the conditions of the sale or to what AOL promised, when they chose to sell it off and make some $$ that was a choice. It's gone now.
RIP Winamp, and the dead llama
I still use Winamp. Whenever I need an MP3 player, I download version 2. something from oldversion.com.
Daily user of WinAMP 5.572 (2010) on win7. Repeated popups urging upgrade are ignored.
The big thing about what happened to Winamp depends on what version you are talking about.
Winamp 2.95 was the best version of Winamp they had. Ran GREAT used low processor and ram usage and did what you wanted it for and did it well.
Then Winamp 3.0 came out with the AOL acquisition and killed it, it was bloated and ran like crap trying to throw in all the stuff you didn't use it for. We didn't use it for videos, we used it for music, if we wanted to watch videos we had other software that did that using more resources, we didn't use it for burning CDs, we had other software that did that using more resources.
And this was a time when RAM and processor resources were at a premium and you could really notice it. It went from Winamp running great and quick to it bogging down your entire PC when you tried to use it due to the resources it used.
Winamp 2.95 was great, it got killed by AOL.
Winamp 3.00+ was crap and traded on the name for years and continues to limp along to this day because of it.
If Winamp 3.0 was an original release, it would have died quickly and 2.95 would have continued on.
Oldversion.com is your friend. With some searching thankfully one can still find the dll plugins for stream ripping, ogg/mod/etc. format decoding, or whatever other neat things one would want. And it still works fine on Win7 x64, no idea about newer platforms though.
BACK IN MY DAY, Slashdotters used Linux and X11AMP. Then XMMS. Then XMMS2. Then Audacious.
I still use Audacious, in fact it's right here on my left screen.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
It kicked the Llama's bucket
I still have the installer for Winamp 25e_full. Probably from around 1997/98 time frame. Last I checked it still ran great and the visualizations are still wild :)
Damn if just mentioning Winamp doesn't bring back fond memory's of days long past..I feel like its 1997 all over again - America is at the height of our power - Cold war is over, Grunge Music is playing everywhere and most people don't even know anyone who owns a cellphone. Good old days if we ever had them.
I bought one of those shareware licenses back around 1999 and I still run 5.666 almost daily. It is a great media player and is far superior to iTunes for listening to and managing music.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I notice that many of the comments on this topic praise how well Winamp plays mp3 files. I installed it, however, because I enjoy streaming classical music (from radio stations that also stream into the Internet) and many of the streams could not be played by RealPlayer (which at one time was a dominant streaming application). Even today, there are streams that are mp3, mp4, m3u, sdp, ram, and possibly others. I now have Winamp, VideoLAN (VLC), and RealAudio so that I can "play" all of them. (VLC seems to be able to play most of them.) I have very few music files on my PC, but I have a list of radio stations that stream into the Internet.
By the way, if any application for streaming is crap, it must be Windows Media Player (Does it still exists?). And I really dislike streams that use Web-based players that require you remain on the source's Web page.
In Linux I use:
- Clementine
- Sayonara Player
- mp3blaster
- plain old mplayer
In Windows:
- Clementine
- Foobar2000
In Android:
- Foobar2000
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
It would be nice if the author bothered to look at Winamp's current development as well...
Winamp is still being developed by DrO
in beta form at getwacup.com
Named - WACUP (Winamp Community Update Pack)
Latest version is v0.9.9.1744 (August 3rd 2017)
It's not dead just yet, thank you very much!!!
Because I really can't live without the "queue" feature. I usually play my lists in random mode, but sometimes I'm in the mood for certain musics, so I just select them in the list and put them in the queue. After those are played, it goes back to random mode. Ah, and I can configure keyboard shortcuts for doing that pretty quickly and easy, so it doesn't break my "flow".
Some time ago I even did searched another player with similar feature but couldn't find. Any suggestions?
Winamp (winamp,winamp). It really whips the lama's ass.
Good times, good times. Im a Spotify user now but back in the days, use Napster (then Kazza) to download and Winamp to play. I also used Sonique which had the best skins of any application ever, but version 2 entered some kind of development hell.
But back to Winamp, is XMMS still being developed? I remember that was a fully working open source backport, compatible with Winamp 2 skins and everything. BeOS had CLamp that was the same thing.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
If foobar2000 is too barebones for you and you want a Winamp-like project with active development, try AIMP.
I believe in the cake.
Yeah winamp is still great and I still use it now that Itunes is DRM free, always liked the ease of use and keyboard shortcuts, also very lightweight, not like itunes bloatware.
You should have stuck around. They admitted version 3 was a mistake and went back to releasing new versions of version 2. THey then skipped version 4 in repentance for version 3 and built a version 5 based on the version 2 code base: not version 3!
iTunes is bloated shit. How Apple got a reputation for "user friendliness" with iTunes on their resume I'll never understand.
Still wish I could have something modern with Nemish
http://bit.ly/2vQIbL2
The first version of iTunes for windows was in 2003.
The first iPod for windows was in 2002. It used MusicMatch Jukebox as the interface software.
http://www.winamp.com/
Although it's been a bit of a quiet decade... The last release was version 5.666, in 2013, but the bits I use it for still work just as good as ever.
According to DJ Egg, who appears to be the only developer left, the latest public beta appears to be stuck in the dread Swamp of Legaldepts
MilkDrop is still the best visualiser, bar none, and the LineIn source still works perfectly.
It runs on a laptop plugged into a projector that paints the ceiling at our band's gigs with a 1920x1080 screen at 60fps. It is frequently admired and commented on.
Winamp was pretty cool and had a large user base, plus all of those add ons. Another top competitor player that I was partial too was Sonique. I liked its skins and visualizations better. I can still play it on WINE using my Mint laptop.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
:Winamp's developers had been earning $100,000 a month just from $10 shareware checks
Guess they didn't miss mine. Absolution feels so good at last!
There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers
Then it would be the same ad infested cancer that iTunes is. What exactly is good about that?
A version of win amp with all its features including plugins would be most welcome..
The current android win amp is very amputated compared to the full Blown version
Me too. I like MediaMonkey. It also works somewhat ok under Wine if no skins are used. Sometimes I get annoyed when it takes too long to open a music file from Windows Explorer, which forces me to use it's own directory browser which however is sometimes really inconvenient.
Interesting, didn't know that. It's been out of Debian and derivatives for a while now unfortunately.
I am not so much using a player as a server. MPD is what I use. It is on a data server and my PCs can connect to it with anything I like. I use xfce4-mpc-plugin and gmpc and I use them at the same time, depending on my mood.
Sometimes I even use mpc in CLI.
That way I can play it from any of my machines.
If I wanted I could even do it from my phones , but I have no need for it at this moment.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Just use groove..............sorry thought I could do it with a straight face.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
...that's what happened.
We'll make great pets
Best tagline ever for an app...
Winamp is one of the only low profile audio players. I can keep it at the top or bottom of my screen it stays out of the way while giving me access it the most essential features and, more importantly, the current track that's playing.
I don't need or want high resolution album art and a netflix style interface, just a simple list.
I couldn't stand Winamp's bloat and ditched it for Groove in Windows 10. They NEED to strip out all of the radio, TV, video crap and go back to their routes as a music player. Small, lightweight, fast!
Yep, back in the day; Nullsoft got my shareware check.
Winamp was the program implementing the Fraunhoffer codec for the 90s. Motion Picture Expert Group Layer 3 encoding (MP3 for short) became synonymous with the Fraunhoffer Codec developed by Germany's Fraunhoff Institute.
https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/prod/audiocodec/audiocodecs/mp3.html
The Codec was copyrighted but the decoding algorithm was released for non commercial use and the source code could be downloaded from the Fraunhoff Institute's website. For a nominal fee; you could license and download the encoding software.
It was a big gigglefest and a flurry of copying files to a different file name when a Microsoft patch implemented MP3 playback one week and tried to patch it out again the next week as they had never gotten rights to use the Fraunhoffer Codec for commercial use. It seems that Winamp, being a shareware program, slid right past the copyright restrictions of the time.
When AOL acquired Winamp; I wondered how long it would take to destroy the product. I was surprised that they didn't destroy it trying to make it AOL exclusive. (AOL never got over the internet and thought everyone really wanted their proprietary sandbox.) But, lack of improvements left Winamp to be outmoded over time.
Gad, I wish there were a decent alternative to iTunes.
NRRPT/RCT
I had a brief affair with winamp when i shortly used winXP on my pentium 4. I liked it. It could play everything i would throw at it.
I quickly switched to linux and used the media player du jour. AmaroK when i was on KDE. Rythmbox when i used GNOME2 then when Ubuntu switched to unity i switched to XFCE and i use gmusicbrowser since then.
Plus VLC for some proprietary media and sometimes an old sidplay for win95 i run on WINE when i want to listen to commodore 64 music.
I heard a lot of positive comments about clementine. I never tried it.
Could use a mod/tracker player on linux.
We all know what happened to WinAmp.
The llama whipped back, and it got it's ass kicked...
But I dont do much in skins and stuff.. Its just a reliable mp3 player to me.
It's fast its lightweight and it works. But only for MP3... I dont use it for video and such...
It's way too old for that, but mp3 haven't changed in a decade so.. still plaing them fine to me.
I've tried other apps but I can't find the same functionality. Winamp had lots of great plugins. I use it regularly to learn songs. I use a plugin that allows me to separately change the pitch and speed, and an MP3 ripper that I can re-record the MP3 in the right key that I can post for other band members to practice with. Couldn't [easily] find another app that does that.
Winamp is installed standard on every Windows machine I use. Winamp v5.666, the Final Nullsoft Release, without the Media Library. This version has ALL of the AOL bundled streaming junk removed, as well as any mention even of AOL. No 'Modern' skins, just good old Winamp 2. Works perfectly for me.
All of that ass whipping across millions of users took its toll on the poor llama, who has been on life support since 2015.
I still have winamp installed but I haven't listened to an MP3 on a computer for years so I haven't used it. Basically my phone has replaced mp3s, or when I do want to listen to music I just look on youtube for it as it is much easier.
I wish I had a lawn.
This makes me feel like an AC troll, but how could a Slashdot summary about Winamp neglect to mention Nullsoft? What has this place become?
I loved Winamp! I used it for years to get radio stations from other countries and it got me into a ton of music that I would have never even heard of otherwise. Also loved all the skins and equalizer functionality. At some point I installed a new OS on a new build and couldn't find a link that looked trustworthy so I went with VLC and haven't looked back.
I'm a doctor not a joke writer!
Those were the days... but today I use whatever is there to play music with. Usually VLC. Dedicated music players have become obsolete IMHO. VLC does it really good and it also plays every other thing I throw at it. Really, I can't understand the need for a dedicated MP3 only music player. It's so 90s.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
I have whatever the last release was before AOL made it disappear, and several user-made ST-TNG skins (a major reason I still use it, apart from being small and simple). It plays sound files whenever VLC doesn't butt in.
Seriously, just wanted to check the comments to confirm that I wasn't anywhere near one of the last people using it and was not disappointed.
Listening to some of my huge collection of MP3, Flac, Oggs and M4A on Winamp right now. It's running happily on my Windows 10 PC here at work.
I detest iTunes with a passion, I hate it's interface and how it does that Apple thing of organising your files the way it sees fit. I listen to music on four different computers, three devices and a car - I need my files sitting happily in a directory I can organise myself.
I've never found a reasonable replacement. Either they have a terrible interface, don't handle files well, or simply don't do some of the things winamp can do.
I'm also using the semi-supported LCD Smartie to show Winamp song details on a small LCD screen below my monitor. Very handy.
BTW my kid - 4.5 year old boy - loves the visualisations. He's always asking me to "put the swirlies on" on our media PC.
i run qmmp under linux -- it still supports my winamp 2.x skins. life is good!
You either die as WinAMP, or you live long enough to see yourself become iTunes.
Those news really whipped a llamma's ass.
I still use WinAMP 2.79 with an AutoHotKey script. It sits in the background, loads all my MP3s just fine, plays FLAC files, and doesn't bug me with bloat or requests to upgrade. Even Milkdrop still works on Windows 7.
I only use iTunes to put stuff on my iPod. At home or on my laptop, I use WinAMP, and it's absolutely perfect.
I only had a 486 DX4. I had to use WinPlay3 for years before I could do anything with WinAmp.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"