Winamp execution date

[Nemmerle]

Is being shut down. December 20th is the execution date. If you want a copy, go download it now.

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If there's one example of buying something and just not knowing what to do with it, Winamp is definitely the one. AOL bought it back in '99 when it was, without a doubt, the best thing on the market. And since then they've proceeded to completely block the ideas that the people running it had.

Well worth reading the write up that Ars did here:

Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself | Ars Technica

I remember many a night, when I was younger, sitting there listening to music over shoutcast and playing games like Max Payne 2 (back when it was new.) In some ways it's still the best media player out there.

End of an era.

[MrFancypants]

I used Winamp for many years. Then I discoevered that that VLC media player plays back the same files with superior audio quality. Maybe winamp doesn't like my PC, maybe the settings got garbled at some point, but VLC sounds definitely better.
Winamp has some nice fatures for media libraries, but VLC has playlists, which is all I need.

Another thing that really makes PC music more enjoyable is a mouse with thumb buttons assigned to macros for going one song forward, back or pausing. Plus, there is a volume control knob on the headset I use. Turning up the volume by twisting a knob that sits on top of your ear is better than dealing with Windows volume control or those little volume things some headsets have build into the cable.

[Nemmerle]

Have you tried foobar by any chance?

foobar2000

That's quite good for managing large collections of music.

I definitely agree on the knob thing. The one thing I miss about my old keyboard was that it had a little wheel that did the master volume control. I mean it was a horrible keyboard other than that, but that bit was nice.

[MrFancypants]

I used foobar as well at one point, don't remember exactly why I stopped using it. I think what I need to do is sort out some of the music I don't listen to anymore. Some of it is from long ago when finding music to download was a big thing and you kept everything because downloading took so long with 56k.

[FileTrekker]

I used to like Winamp, but VLC just made it feel cumbersome, slow and incompatible.

I liked Shoutcast back in the day though.

[Commissar MercZ]

The end of an era: Winamp's shutting down | PCWorld

Spoiler:

After more than 15 years, the famous Winamp media player will shut down on December 20, its makers announced Wednesday.

The announcement itself was a whimper—a small banner notification on the Winamp website—rather than a bang, and the end seems sadly appropriate. The skinnable media player was all the rage at the turn of the century, but barely made a peep since being acquired by AOL in 1999.

After years of floundering, Winamp released Android and Mac versions in 2010 and 2011, respectively, but that appears to have been too little, too late.


The website notification warns Winamp users of its impending shutdown. (Click to enlarge.) As Winamp ruled the days of Napster, iTunes and streaming media services such as Spotify and Pandora control the music scene of today. Winamp’s still got the skins, but it was just too niche in today’s cross-platform, pay-as-you-go world, though the software still reportedly made money right up until the end.

ArsTechnica has a superb, detailed look at Winamp’s fall from grace—a tumble that former Winamp honchos attribute to AOL mismanagement. If you can’t bear to leave the past behind, you have one more month to download the free Winamp media player before it shuffles into the annals of history.

Don’t forget to snag some skins and plug-ins while you’re at it. Because nostalgia.

[Via ArsTechnica]

I remember having this way back when, had a crappy star wars themed skin. Oh boy

[MrFancypants]

Nem mentioned that in GD. Not a big loss if you ask me, winamp started annoying me with lots of bugs a couple of years ago. I was a fan of the early versions though.

[Nemmerle]

As I mentioned over in GD, I have fond memories of listening to web radio via winamp as a teenager.

I only really stopped when I went to uni - uni's internet was crap.

Wasn't a huge fan of how they changed the interface for shoutcast when I looked at it again. Made it a lot harder to find the right stations.

[D3matt]

Can't say I'll miss it. VLC is way better. VLC is lighter and faster, and just a generally better program, than anything else out there.

[Nemmerle]

VLC skips the audio out when I'm watching .mp4 files on this machine.

It was pretty good before the last update anyway