What just happened? Winamp, the popular music player that evokes a sense of nostalgia among millions of PC users, is preparing for its launch on Android and iOS. The mobile apps have been in beta testing for a while, with the aim of making them publicly available on both platforms before the end of the year.
The news comes from Llama Group, the company behind the Winamp Player that has sort-of reinvented itself as a streaming platform for songs, podcasts, radio stations, and audiobooks. According to the press release, Winamp Player has more than 17,000 artists on the 'Creators' platform that allows fans to support artists by subscribing to their content. The company aims to get to 100,000 creators on the platform by the end of next year.
The press release, however, does not reveal an exact release date for the mobile apps, nor does it say anything about what features to expect. That means we don't know whether it will allow playback of local audio files in line with media players like VLC. The app's Play Store listing suggests that the current app will only scan the 'Music' and 'Download' folders for local audio, meaning it might not be the full-fledged music player that some may have hoped for.
Also read: What Ever Happened to Winamp?
Interestingly, the company also announced that Winamp will introduce NFT functionality soon. The decision seems to come a couple of years too late though, as the NFT craze has long died down, and most platforms are moving away from that to more trendy buzzwords like AI and machine learning. On the positive side, Winamp will also be available in Spanish and French later this year, potentially helping the platform reach a wider audience.
While many younger users may not even have heard of Winamp, GenX folks and older millennials remember it as one of the must-have apps for their Windows PCs back in the late '90s and early 2000s alongside the likes of Netscape, Winzip, Alcohol 120, PowerDVD, and Yahoo Messenger. While it has since lost its relevance, the company is trying to make an ardent effort to bring it back to its former glory, although it's anybody's guess as to whether it will succeed in doing so.