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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The charmingly outdated media player Winamp is being reinvented as a platform-agnostic audio mobile app that brings together all your music, podcasts, and streaming services to a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."
From the article:
"What I see today is you have to jump from one player to another player or aggregator if you want to listen to a radio station, to a podcast player if you want to listen to a podcast — this, to me, is not the final experience,” he explained. It’s all audio, and it’s all searchable in one fashion or another. So why isn’t it all in one place?"
Kinda the reason I use WinAmp is because it is not this.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
And most of my geek friends still use it too.
So long as they keep it simple like it was and don't "modernize" the UI experience. I always liked the low requirements it had to do all the things it did. Audacious runs on my Linux machines in it's WinAmp mode quite nicely.
Anybody who wants a simple lightweight music player that just works and not a bloated "music library manager" one.
...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
But I have foobar2000.
I loved winamp, and would love to get it back. I don't really have faith that this won't be a terrible cloud heavy version with the old Winamp name. But, here's hoping it's a lightweight music player that doesn't connect to the internet unless I direct it to.
You can't have more lightweight than clicking "play" on the file in Finder (macOS).
It really whips the lamma's ass.. *baaah* *bahhh*
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Audacious, a descendant of XMMS (which was a clone of Winamp), works wonderfully. Its "Winamp Classic Interface" looks exactly like Winamp and even (iirc) supports Winamp skins.
That said, I do miss the old (original) Whitecap visualization (one of the very few in which you could really see the music in what was still a visually stunning display), which only works on Winamp on Windows. (...not that Winamp's return would allow me to run this again.)
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
It died. Its ass was really kicked too hard too many times :-/
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
We're all glad that this amazing truck with crane in the back works for you.
Most people however do not need a truck with crane in the back, even if it's really convenient for you heavy mover. Most people just want a basic sedan with good mileage.
"People want one single experience."
A lot of software has gone down to tubes because of this idea. People don't want one single experience. They want different experiences for different circumstances. They want software with features optimized for how they listen to music, how they listen to streaming radio and how they listen to podcasts. Combining them into one app is both unnecessary and creates undesirable side effects.
The same thing happened with social media apps tried to be the be-all and end-all of all media, when users want to keep things nice and compartmentalized.
On the phones, there's musicolet. It serves the same purpose and has very similar functionality to good old winamp.
Aw lol some poor AC doesn't know about themes! And thinks that a tool used to manage and play music needs to be 'pretty'! Ahahahahaha!
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.
Better how? iTunes and WMP are both terrible.
The only thing I know that really compares is FooBar
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
I do.
Why use anything else?
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.
I hope they continue development of that. With modern GPU it should be possible to do some really amazing real-time beat synced effects.
foobar2000 is a truck with crane in the back ?
I still use it and it is running right now.
Usually listening to the MP3-stream of local FM-radiostations.
(Although finding the URL for the streams can be hard to find...)
Why on earth people want to listen to radio through a webbrowser is beyond me.
Putting WinAmp in the system tray makes it go away and not take up space in the TaskBar.
So, hopefully this "new" development will not make things worse.......
I know there are 'clones' but I haven't found them to be very useful.
I've tried nearly every player on Linux, and they are either wayyyy too simple or wayyyy to complicated. I don't need a music manager, everything I have is organized by file structure. I don't need a database. I don't need links to album art, or streaming sites, or scrotobobbler, or last.fm, or any of that. I need a decent music player for mp3s. A decent EQ would be nice, and maybe some visualizations if the mood strikes me. That's it.
I've just been using VLC for the past umpteen years, and it works just fine. An actual Winamp would be pretty cool though.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Winamp is a tool. It does the job. And things like iTunes aren't really a substitute, and weirdly even on my multi-GHz system iTunes likes to spin and wait at random times.
The Winamp is like the Nokia brand for Europeans. There is a mix of nostalgia and trust associated with the brand.
Fear is the mind-killer.
I need a program that plays mp3 files. Winamp works just fine. At some point there is no room for improvement. A hammer from 1000 years ago looks like a hammer from today.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The only thing that stopped me from using WinAmp was my move to Linux. I'd still be using XMMS if I could...
Apparently Luckyo is running a rig with a Pentium 4 in it.
Winamp never went anywhere. Unlike most modern software, it didn't require to check in over the Internet to work, so it still works just fine today. I've been happily using Winamp for a few decades, and hopefully, I'll continue to use it for the foreseeable future. The last version is version 5.666, and it was released as a final "thank you, goodbye" with *all* of the "pro" (formerly paid) features, and none of the crapware. I use it for playing all of my media, for ripping and burning CD's, and all sorts of neat stuff.
Sometimes, software works as intended, with no problems, and simply doesn't need to be "upgraded" any more. I think this is one of those cases.
I don't respond to AC's.
What's a better option for listening to music than Winamp? Seriously?
I don't respond to AC's.
me
It is already there. Including skin support.
https://webamp.org/
I'm still using XMMS on Fedora 28.
I loved XMMS. Is there a good player for linux? I haven't enjoyed Rythmbox, Media Player, and even VLC is powerful but not a great interface like winamp & XMMS.
Woops you're wrong LMAO I bought Win8 and accepted the free upgrade to Win10, even. I pay a monthly subscription to Office365 and would enjoy an option to subscribe to Windows as well. I gave up on desktop Linux 15 years ago.
I'm a daily user of Audacious so it doesn't matter much to me, but it would be great for them to ensure modern open source codecs like opus (either encapsulated in ogg or not, streamed or file-based) is as well supported as possible.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
--Try Deadbeef. Pretty close to the xmms/winamp experience on Linux.
http://deadbeef.sourceforge.ne...
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
And a CRT monitor that says "Energy Star" :D
Yes. It has tools that go well beyond "just play my audio and provide basic control features for it in a lightweight player". Have you ever actually used it? It's really great when you need to do things that go beyond playback.
It's also great when you only do things that don't go beyond playback because it's the least cluttered. The difference is that its advanced features (eg. tag editing) do not require extra tools as it was with Winamp.
I do.
Important power features work better when provided by the main package because it's much easier for users to support and help each other. You don't have to install them if you don't want to.
There's no such thing as "too powerful". As long as the interface is easy to use for new users, power options is always good to have as long as the package is small. Foobar has a smaller installation package, despite all its available power and its easier to use than winamp because it uses standard operating system controls instead of tiny graphics (at least as it was the case with Winamp when I left it).
Winamp was good in the 90s. It was awesome. But once it was sold to AOL, it was done. Foobar was last updated a week ago.
Anybody who wants a simple lightweight music player that just works and not a bloated "music library manager" one.
Foobar2000. Winamp is no longer relevant in a market with better options that meet all your requirements.
I never jumped on the winamp bandwagon, was more of a Sonique user. (Which still works on Win10)
>There's no such thing as "too powerful".
I'll just state that if you take even a cursory look at human machine interface and human physiological limitations literature, you'll understand that reality is diametric opposite of this statement. We as biological creatures are heavily optimized in how our attention is directed and how much brain capacity is allotted to the task with the rest going to cripplingly slow and inefficient abstraction, and exceeding these limitations even by a little bit will slow down the brain's processing speed by thousands of times.
It's a very heavy price to pay for "more powerful".
A good and very simple example of this human limitation is multiplication tables. Time yourself how long it take you do the math on 4*4, 8*8, 12*12, 16*16 etc. There is almost no perceptible speed differential as long as we stay within optimized areas. The speed crashes by hundreds of times slower once you exit this area and go into abstraction.
This just as an example of what we're talking about on very basic level, and for learned things. When you go into hard coded biological aspects, like the way attention is directed within cone of vision, speed differential commonly has three meaningful zeroes at the tail.
And on your last point, which I failed to edit into my original point. Why does something that works well for specific task need updates? I've used same version of winamp for something close to a half a decade if not longer. It does everything I need it to do. What is the benefit of getting "updates"?
Try qmmp; it's pretty much (old) winamp for linux. Simple, light, just works.
Yes I know, but as I've said, foobar provides powerful *options*. If you don't care about them, you won't even see them, so you'll never move outside your optimized area.
This!
This is literally the answer to my question that concedes that there's no point to updates if everything works as intended.
This is the case for most people with winamp.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. One has to remember that these kinds of preferences are deeply personal, just like someone can do even triple number multiplications rapidly.
There's nothing wrong with Winamp users sticking to what works for them. My issue was with your initial analogy of foobar to a truck with a crane.
Because foobar2k is windows software. Musicolet is an android music player?