What Ever Happened to Winamp?

Winamp to me is just one thing - nostalgia. Especially the default UI shown above.

As time passed by, I just started using Windows Media Player, since it's already integrated with Windows.

But still, Winamp still holds a place in my nostalgic heart.

I think I will try to install back the freeware versions in my 86Box (PCem fork) 's Win9x profiles.

 
I love all the comments above... Funny stuff.

I still use Winamp, two different versions actually. 2.95 for audio and 5.8 for video. Both work perfectly. No need to change what works.
 
Winamp went the path web browsers os going (in cell phones)... It's been past long the day the only way you could listen to music was playing MP3 files so Winamp lost it appeal to me. Even before I surrended to Google Music service (Im a Spotify happy user nowadays) I used to listen to my MP3 collection on just my cellphone using Google Music as a music player, than VLC for Android.

Now as most plain music consumer, stream is the default service for me. Also I really loved the visualization plugins for Winamp, but now whenever I got to time and interest to also see something music related I prefer some live concert or music video clip, firing up some video streaming service anyway.

As a plain media consumer only MPC HC still survive after a Windows 10 reinstall, still I only install it when some hard to find movie need the torrent treatment.
 
I was thinking about winamp myself the other day. Ah the days when the internets was better, and not every tom **** and harry was on it, ruining it for everyone else.
And that includes apple and its awful software that still is horrible, but then its Apple.

But to turn to VLC. No way. And while that horrible player with that awful icon (why the fudge would you install something that changes all your icons to a traffic cone) could play near enough everything, so could MPClassic with ffdshow and the cccp codec pack, and we just wanted to play them .mkv files for the anime.

 
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Obligatory Foobar2000 plug.

Was a Winamp user as a little teenage runt. Still have fond memories of it for a first-time player. Foobar2000's developer was also a Winamp plugin developer then, IIRC, the Kernel Streaming plugin.
 
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Easy, it was replaced with better and more modern software.

Banshee
Clementine
VLC Media Player
Rythmbox
Lollypop
Audacious

The list goes on...The only reason to use Winamp anymore is for the Nostalgia factor.
 
For Video in addition to audio, nothing beats the versatility and complete control that GOM player offers- nothing!
 
No visualizer has compared to milk drop for me. And winamp has the only shuffle algorithm that seems to actually work once you get to play lists with more than 100 songs
 
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What a great read! Well-written, nostalgia piece. Of course, the title drew my "not exactly old yet, but definitely an 80s-baby" interest in, and indeed, Winamp is a classic fit for any media-player record book, but I am commenting simply to remark on the writing and the flow of the article. Very well done!

Perhaps I'll add that this article has made Techspot.com my homepage...for a while at least. Appreciated!

Lastly, let's not forget that Winamp was the alternative, better player to Windows Media Player. In my opinion, Winamp is what made Microsoft improve their player. Of course, WMP ultimately was chosen by "audiophiles" and the like by the time it got to Version 11, but I believe that it was the likes of Winamp which pushed Microsoft to clean up WMP9+

Shout out to the creators of Winamp and the writer of this article.

Cheers, all-around!
 
It may not have been as lucrative as the good old days, but it was better than nothing.

No, it was very lucrative and still is. On top of that it allowed lesser know musicians to get their music into the hands of their fans when they might not have had an avenue to do so prior.

Music licensing and the revenue generated by it, is absolutely ridiculous. You pay over and over to play music you purchased.
 
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Mister_K said:
With VLC, YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Prime etc... for video content and Spotify and Soundcloud for audio, I see no need for personal libraries anymore (unless you rip media and need the $$$). Now if you care about the best of the best audio fidelity, I suppose why not but I just don't have time to keep the libraries up when Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube gives me all the content quickly.

Never did use Winamp as much as I did iTunes (it made me killmyself everytime I would reinstall my Windows @iTunes).
Click to expand...
Because many of us dont want to spend a cable subscription's level of money every month on streamign "servicees" that are missing huge portions of the available catalog, constantly take stuff down because of "rights" or "problematic content" or to promote "another service"? Just a thought.

If you like paying $$$ for the latest marvel dross and biggest releases, more power to you. If you like more obscure or less popular stuff, and like having control over your media, streaming is a garbage option.
 
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I've been using a very obscure (I think) player called AlSong since the 2010's because it had an option to show song lyrics in real time and because I got really used to it's shortcuts that allow me skip songs and adjust the volume wherever I am.
 
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Mighty Duck said:
I've been using a very obscure (I think) player called AlSong since the 2010's because it had an option to show song lyrics in real time and because I got really used to it's shortcuts that allow me skip songs and adjust the volume wherever I am.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I will try.
 
I have no intention of giving up Winamp, I use Winamp version 5.66 and I often install it for friends who are thrilled.
I have tried other programs but they cannot be compared to Winamp
 
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VitalyT said:
Since you can play any video or audio file with VLC, installing something extra is no longer necessary.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you're one of those hard-core Linux people. VLC doesn't come with Windows, and Winamp is still far superior for audio (and MPC is far superior for video - VLC is garbage by any measure). The last solid version of Winamp is 5.666. The versions that came after that won't load your existing playlists correctly.
 
I used to use winamp because of the visualizations that make it more versatile than vlc. But now I buy commercial visualizations and just download them to windows media player because wmp allows me to make a playlist using both audio and video in the same playlist. I use Nero and have used cyberlink commercial applications as well but I have not been able to make a playlist with both audio and video anywhere else, maybe you can but I don't know that.
 
I started my journey with WMP. I then switched to Musicmatch Jukebox. Loved it, but I think it wasn't compatible with Vista, so I switched to WinAMP, which I am still using to this day.
Big Bento for me.
 
psycros said:
I'm guessing you're one of those hard-core Linux people. VLC doesn't come with Windows, and Winamp is still far superior for audio (and MPC is far superior for video - VLC is garbage by any measure). The last solid version of Winamp is 5.666. The versions that came after that won't load your existing playlists correctly.
Click to expand...
There is a version of VLC for Windows. It seems to work well enough for me for both video and audio files. And, of course, since VLC is currently being updated, it will handle new audio formats as they are invented.
But if Winamp can work under 64-bit Windows, if it's better, certainly it is worth trying.
Oh, I see that MPC-HC is also no longer under active development at this time.
 
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Started on Winamp.
Used MusicMatch for encoding, but it was a notorious resource hogger and tried too hard with the skins.
Peter Pawlowski initially was a plugin developer for Winamp, was it the Kernel Streaming one?
Then he decided to chart a new course and started Foobar2000 to provide audio enthusiasts with a solid foundation in audio quality and testing, none of that hoodoo-voodoo you see in so many other audio circles.
 
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