r.i.p. Winamp shutting down on December 20, 2013

[benthebear]

Winamp and Sonique were the two MP3 players I used back in the day. Like with Sonique, I'll be sad to see it go.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

i can't help but thinking that winamp ended up being the musicmatchjukebox of this decade.

 

was a great media player until is was bought out by a crappy company (was yahoo in musicmatch's case) and then turned to crap and later killed off

 

really a shame

[Decebalvs Rex]

It will still live on different computers around the world , that old masterpiece won't die that easy. However it met the end of its lifecycle and the ideeas wich were integrated didn't fit the community requirements these days. A damn shame as it was an iconic program for almost everybody.

[Fish]

I've always used it, and still do to this day. I'm just so comfortable with how it works; I've tried others but I always come back to it. Can't see myself using anything else for a while too.

[laserfloyd]

NOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo.... oh well. I haven't used it in ages. I downloaded it for nostalgic purposes. It really did whip that llama's ass. :)

[pixelpixel]

I am still using it.

I don't like any other so called replacement. :(

[simonlang]

 

Best Winamp theme EVER!!!

 

I loved the skinny bar I could put on the top of a monitor.

 

 

 

 

oh yeh i remember that one. together with one of the modified silver themes for windows xp (all the grenn was exchanged with blue), that was easily a far far better result than what we see today with plain ugly windows 8 or many default linux desktops (at least with linux you can customize it a lot)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

 

Best Winamp theme EVER!!!

 

I loved the skinny bar I could put on the top of a monitor.

 

 

 

I used to use MMD3 as well for a long time. Around 2003/2004 if I recall correctly.

[riahc3]

Hello,

what?!?! i did NOT see that one coming. not at all.

i associate great times and memories with winamp and winamp.com. i remember it was probably 13-14 years ago when i learnt about the mp3 format, i even installed winamp but had no internet so i spend many weekends with my uncle and downloaded massive ammounts of skins from winamp website - i loved those emulating car-radios :punk:

also later on, when it became a pro version i found their concept fair to still offer a free basic version.

 

RIP :(

Im completely shocked as well. It currently is my default audio player (not video). Why are they doing this?

 

I loved winamp. It would be nice if they open sourced it.

+1

They should do this just for respect out of its customers.

[Starbuck84]

Shame. Although I haven't used Winamp in years to be honest. Version 3 was so buggy for me and I switched to Foobar2000. I did try version 5 several times, but I couldn't be bothered anymore. Winamp 2.x were the best versions out there. Stable as a Nokia 3310, it just worked.

 

I do remember old Winamp 0.9x on my 486DX2/66 under Windows 95. Played fine, until you moved the mouse. :D *those were the days* - I feel old now. :(

[riahc3]

Hello,

Another strange thing is that I believe a little over a year ago they released Winamp for Android. Why develop that if you knew it (Winamp) was a dying product?

There has to be something else.....

[The Evil Overlord]

Hello,

Another strange thing is that I believe a little over a year ago they released Winamp for Android. Why develop that if you knew it (Winamp) was a dying product?

There has to be something else.....

Maybe it's just crap compared to WMP :p

 

In seriousness, It does seem to be strange, it had superior controls to sound reproduction, and when I listen to the same song on different players I do find myself going back to winamp

 

or is piracy to blame??? :shifty:

[Blackhearted]

Not surprised to see it die. As there have been much better media players than winamp for years. Such as aimp2 which i switched to like 5 years ago.

[riahc3]

Hello,

Maybe it's just crap compared to WMP :p

 

In seriousness, It does seem to be strange, it had superior controls to sound reproduction, and when I listen to the same song on different players I do find myself going back to winamp

 

or is piracy to blame??? :shifty:

Im thinking about it and I think Winamp is trolling us :p

There are still 5.7 Betas being pumped out. I think we will see a renaming and thats it....

[Starbuck84]

Maybe they hoped to gain a boost by releasing a media player for mobile devices? Winamp 5 is quite the "complete" product. It's stable as far as I know and it just plays. All they could do is adding extra "features" which raises your eye-brow, so they started looking in to other markets? Just a guess here.

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

I too have been using WinAmp for the last 13-15 years...I knew WinAmp was doomed the moment AOL expressed the desire to buy it. Fortunately, it's taken them this long.

 

I wonder now if they'll close shoutcast.com too.

 

It will be a big blow to the whole internet radio scene if they shut it too. (back in the day, I actually had my own station and was a broadcaster of house tunes :d)

[riahc3]

Hello,

Maybe they hoped to gain a boost by releasing a media player for mobile devices? Winamp 5 is quite the "complete" product. It's stable as far as I know and it just plays. All they could do is adding extra "features" which raises your eye-brow, so they started looking in to other markets? Just a guess here.

Well, it would be a quick boost at most but still: Why release beta versions if Winamp is going to die?

I think they are just going to rename the product with a different engine. It makes no sense (more so to stop offering download links to it)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Winamp is owned by AOL, remember? They're the same ones who killed the Netscape brand willy-nilly. To them it likely makes no difference whether or not Winamp is still pumping out beta versions.

 

I wouldn't get my hopes of AOL open-sourcing Winamp up either. Your best bet is to hold on to the installer of the last version and re-use it until it becomes incompatible with Windows 11. :P

[riahc3]

Hello,

Winamp is owned by AOL, remember? They're the same ones who killed the Netscape brand willy-nilly. To them it likely makes no difference whether or not Winamp is still pumping out beta versions.

 

I wouldn't get my hopes of AOL open-sourcing Winamp up either. Your best bet is to hold on to the installer of the last version and re-use it until it becomes incompatible with Windows 11. :p

Then why have developers working on a product you are going to kill? Either fire them or make them work on something else.

Winamp's latest version started to incoperate "Winamp Cloud" which I imagine is somewhere you store you music online and Winamp can stream it from there (ala Google Music). It makes no sense keep on developing Winamp and technologies around it.

Ill wait till Dec 20 and see what happens.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Hello,

Then why have developers working on a product you are going to kill? Either fire them or make them work on something else.

Winamp's latest version started to incoperate "Winamp Cloud" which I imagine is somewhere you store you music online and Winamp can stream it from there (ala Google Music). It makes no sense keep on developing Winamp and technologies around it.

Ill wait till Dec 20 and see what happens.

Again - this is more than likely a decision from AOL. Made by corporate goons who don't give a **** about the work put into Winamp.

[Starbuck84]

Hello,

Well, it would be a quick boost at most but still: Why release beta versions if Winamp is going to die?

I think they are just going to rename the product with a different engine. It makes no sense (more so to stop offering download links to it)

True true. Guess, we'll have to wait and see.

 

Seeing as they intend to stop on the 20th of December, maybe they're releasing a special Christmas edition? :woot:

[riahc3]

Hello,

Again - this is more than likely a decision from AOL. Made by corporate goons who don't give a **** about the work put into Winamp.

Yes, but the AOL coroporate team can move the Winamp team whereever and whenever they want. Development on Winamp would stop.

[MidnightDevil]

I remember back in 99', it was the first download I did when I got my internet @ Freeserve.co.uk with my kick ass V9 56K modem.

Was also my first download when I got ADSL in Portugal @256K. 

It was my companion for many years. I still use it sometimes. 

I really hope it gets open sourced and continued. 

[Kriz]

Dont think ive used Winamp without Napster also running alongside it.. RIP though, you did your job old friend (Y)

[devHead]

I was the same way; it's been probably over a year since I had Winamp running on my PC.  Now that I have JRiver Media Center, there's no reason to run anything else.  Although, I still have Foobar installed for quick playing on my computer, since JRiver is configured to play through my Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card into my stereo.

 

 

Wow, end of an era. I used to use Winamp back in the day, then I switched to iTunes/foobar2000. I was actually thinking about giving it a shot again before I moved to JRiver Media Center.

 

R.I.P. Winamp. :(