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Winamp Media Player To Return as a Platform-Agnostic Audio Mobile App Next Year; Desktop Application Receives an Update (techcrunch.com)
The charmingly outdated media player Winamp is being reinvented as a platform-agnostic audio mobile app that brings together all your music, podcasts, and streaming services to a single location. From a report: It's an ambitious relaunch, but the company behind it says it's still all about the millions-strong global Winamp community -- and as proof, the original desktop app is getting an official update as well. For those who don't remember: Winamp was the MP3 player of choice around the turn of the century, but went through a rocky period during Aol ownership and failed to counter the likes of iTunes and the onslaught of streaming services, and more or less crumbled over the years. The original app, last updated in 2013, still works, but to say it's long in the tooth would be something of an understatement (the community has worked hard to keep it updated, however). So it's with pleasure that I can confirm rumors that substantial updates are on the way.
"There will be a completely new version next year, with the legacy of Winamp but a more complete listening experience," said Alexandre Saboundjan, CEO of Radionomy, the company that bought Winamp (or what remained of it) in 2014. "You can listen to the MP3s you may have at home, but also to the cloud, to podcasts, to streaming radio stations, to a playlist you perhaps have built. People want one single experience," he concluded. "I think Winamp is the perfect player to bring that to everybody. And we want people to have it on every device."
"There will be a completely new version next year, with the legacy of Winamp but a more complete listening experience," said Alexandre Saboundjan, CEO of Radionomy, the company that bought Winamp (or what remained of it) in 2014. "You can listen to the MP3s you may have at home, but also to the cloud, to podcasts, to streaming radio stations, to a playlist you perhaps have built. People want one single experience," he concluded. "I think Winamp is the perfect player to bring that to everybody. And we want people to have it on every device."
...it's going to be 2.1 gig d/l, require a credit card to sign in (we will never charge you, ever!), and gather every single personal data point resident on your system.
And still won't perform the basic function of playing mp3s as well as 2013 version.
-Styopa
Except, Winamp is ALREADY this. Winamp has an extensive plugin system. It can already play podcasts. It CREATED internet radio through Shoutcast. Other plugins are available for other data sources too... I know this, because I remember writing them and publishing them myself.
I'm still using Winamp 2.95 for music, and there's nothing that needs to be updated about it. It plays music, has a playlist, volume control. There's also a "browser" which thankfully can be turned off. I suspect this new version will have even more amazing shiny new features that need to be turned off, so basically, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
As one of those people who helped build the WinAmp ecosystem and watched its subsequent AOL implosion I have to say, "Good!", and "It's about time, Radionomy." So, ya know, if you need the original sources for the 2.65-ish build... I still have them hanging around somewhere on an old CD. Justin and Tom were always messy and I was always cleaning up after them. But, by all means, I hope you improve on it somehow. I still rock out with WinAmp sometimes.
This is why myself and a ton of the other people from the plugin community jumped ship over to foobar2000. fb2k is developed by the guy who wrote the MP3 decoder for Winamp, but had issues with the audio processing pipeline of Winamp degrading audio quality. Disputes happened. He left. Built fb2k. And the rest is history! It is by far the cleanest, lightest music player available for desktop now. Multiple tabbed playlists are awesome. My largest playlist has ~16k tracks in it, and supports pretty much real-time text searching. And yup, it supports audio codec "components" as they call them to extend it with more file support or other functionality.