geo Posted November 20, 2013 http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/20/winamp-shutting-down/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget&ncid=rss_semi 0 Share this post Link to post
Gez Posted November 20, 2013 I didn't even know there was something to shut down. I have foobar2000 and XMPlay. Haven't used WinAmp since the early days of Windows XP. So what exactly did winamp.com offer, besides downloading a media player? 0 Share this post Link to post
Zed Posted November 20, 2013 Here's a possible explanation on techcrunch: "In an interview with Ars Technica last year, Rob Lord, the first hire at Nullsoft and the first general manager of Winamp said that he believed that “there’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition.” While AOL kept Winamp going – it released an Android version in 2010 and Winamp Sync for Mac, including a full player, launched in 2011 – there was never a clear sense of what was going on with the product. The Winamp blog, however, hasn’t been updated for the last year and judging from Ars’ portrait of the company’s fortunes from 2012, it seems like AOL never quite knew what to do with it." For me, I haven't used Winamp for like 4 years, but I remember it was quite good in the early 2000's. 0 Share this post Link to post
Belial Posted November 20, 2013 Winamp 2.91 is still my mp3 player of choice. 0 Share this post Link to post
chungy Posted November 20, 2013 I haven't used Winamp since I switched to Linux well over a decade ago. But I've gone through XMPP, BeepMP, and now Audacious. The UI is nice and tidy and I like it :P 0 Share this post Link to post
45th Parrallel Posted November 20, 2013 I still use winamp because VLCs shuffle is crap and windows media player is itself 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted November 20, 2013 That's pretty sad, if true. Winamp pretty much became synonymous with "MP3 player" on the Windows desktop, and even today I like its interface better (with the Modern skin) than any other media player. Very versatile, too, thanks to its plugins. From .VOC to .MP3, from .MOD to .S3M, from .YM to .ST, there was almost nothing it couldn't play. Also, best playlist management of any other player I've seen. The only aspect that was seriously lacking IMO was support for Flash video formats: it kept hijacking FLV file extensions even though it simply could not play them. But if it's gone....back to having a bazillion dedicated players *groan* 0 Share this post Link to post
Waffenak Posted November 20, 2013 Just listened Bach using winamp, shame if this is the end 0 Share this post Link to post
printz Posted November 20, 2013 Damn… Is the media player going away too? I really like Winamp's simple Open folder to play the songs within menu command. No library meta-folders to worry about (unless you wanted to). 0 Share this post Link to post
DooMAD Posted November 20, 2013 Can't see it being a problem as long as oldversion.com stays online. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mechadon Posted November 20, 2013 I used Winamp exclusively a few years ago. I even made some [pretty terrible] skins for it for my personal use. But I swapped out to Foobar2000 a while ago and haven't looked back. Still, it is kind of sad to see Winamp die :( 0 Share this post Link to post
Jodwin Posted November 20, 2013 Still using Winamp and don't see a reason to change. 0 Share this post Link to post
Remilia Scarlet Posted November 20, 2013 printz said:Damn… Is the media player going away too? I really like Winamp's simple Open folder to play the songs within menu command. No library meta-folders to worry about (unless you wanted to). You can do this in Audacious (which is available on Windows as well as Linux). You just do Add on a folder. 0 Share this post Link to post
Six Posted November 20, 2013 I've been using Winamp for the past 8 years. Before then i used iTunes, but the releases back then were so excruciatingly buggy to the point that i decided to migrate to Winamp. Needless to say i've never looked back since. Pretty sad news, at least to me anyway. 0 Share this post Link to post
Walter confetti Posted November 20, 2013 oh, crap.... so this means that winamp will not work? Since i still use it also on my VISTA pc right now.... 0 Share this post Link to post
Aliotroph? Posted November 21, 2013 It surprises me they kept updating it as long as they did. I'm not switching any time soon. I have the thing configured to play all kinds of chiptunes. 0 Share this post Link to post
Lizardcommando Posted November 21, 2013 I still use WinAmp too. I just like how simple the interface is. 0 Share this post Link to post
Doom_Dude Posted November 21, 2013 I've been using Winamp for years so this is bad news to hear. I'll continue to use it for as long as possible tho. The only Winamp plugins I use include Amp Randomizer 2 and one for Album Art. I also used to use a sound level normalizer jobby, but I've been to lazy to go find that again. Mechadon said:I even made some [pretty terrible] skins for it for my personal use. That reminds me that I once made a shitty classic skin ages ago. I never released it, thankfully. lol 0 Share this post Link to post
Dragonsbrethren Posted November 21, 2013 I switched over to XMPlay years ago. It supports WinAmp plugins, which was the only reason I used it. 0 Share this post Link to post
Nomad Posted November 21, 2013 I've always used Winamp out of habit, though it's pretty ridiculous on system resources. I guess it's time enough that I switched to something different anyway. A lot of people seem to be using Mediamonkey these days, I seem to gather? Might start using that. 0 Share this post Link to post
Graf Zahl Posted November 21, 2013 Good riddance. I never was a fan of it. I've been using MediaMonkey for several years now. While it does have its quirks it's one of the very few players that don't have a messed up user interface. Most seem to have copied all the badness that WinAmp introduced in some ways. I've been sticking to the old 3.x version though, it seems to work a little better than 4.x. The last one I checked out was Audacious but that one clearly takes the cake for presenting an utterly useless interface where I can't even have my playlists permanently on screen. And on top of that it uses GTK+, meaning that nothing works as it should on Windows. It lasted 5 minutes until I deleted it. 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted November 21, 2013 Gez said:I didn't even know there was something to shut down. Apart from the registration server, users will probably lose access to the Gracenote metadata at some point. That for me was the final nail in MediaMatch's coffin after Yahoo decided to kill it off. 0 Share this post Link to post
Avoozl Posted November 21, 2013 I love winamp I use it a lot, I also used to use it for converting usf/gsf and other format video game music. 0 Share this post Link to post
Jodwin Posted November 21, 2013 walter confalonieri said:oh, crap.... so this means that winamp will not work? Since i still use it also on my VISTA pc right now.... Of course it will keep working. It just won't get any updates. 0 Share this post Link to post
Deleted_Account Posted November 21, 2013 I love Winamp. Sad to see it shutting down. :( 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted November 21, 2013 I'm fine with that, Winamp is a very fast and easy media player (as it is) and I like it a lot for how quickly I can assemble playlists. I'm sure other media players may even be able to do it better but I'm comfortable with pretty much everything about Winamp and see no reason to change. 0 Share this post Link to post
bcwood16 Posted November 21, 2013 sad :( I have been using Winamp for along time and still do. Its just fast, no messy interface and plays most things. What do people recommend as alternatives? I play a lot of movies in Winamp too and also work with a lot of Quicktime formats. I keep hearing of Foobar? Maybe I should check it out? 0 Share this post Link to post
Bashe Posted November 21, 2013 Up until last month, I had been using Winamp as my main audio player since early 2005 or so, though I had been using it for things WMP couldn't play since about 2003. I only switched from Winamp to Foobar in an attempt to quell a problem I thought might be exclusive to Winamp, but it turned out that wasn't the case. I decided to stick with Foobar since I spent the time setting it up and felt that it would serve me well and I've ended up liking it thus far. Regardless, R.I.P. Winamp. You served me well for ~10 years, and I don't regret it. 0 Share this post Link to post
DoomUK Posted November 21, 2013 I used to use Winamp when I was too cool for WMP. Then, one day, I forgot to install Winamp after wiping my computer and accidentally discovered that I didn't really need it. 0 Share this post Link to post
Ladna Posted November 21, 2013 The world kind of left MP3 apps in the dust; I almost never listen to music that isn't on my phone now, and the music that is on my phone is in the cloud somewhere. I still use Winamp though. Why? Because the plugins are bananas. I have yet to find a player anywhere that plays: * Genesis * Gameboy * SNES * PSX * PS2 * NES Like the chipamp collection does. Don't say "AUDACIOUS YOU FUCKIN IDIOT", its support blows and breaks every new commit. I've taken to using Winamp to rip these chiptune formats to high-bitrate MP3s and storing them on Google Music. The waste and loss of fidelity kind of kills me, but so be it. (also that guy is an idiot; no one likes iTunes, they're just forced to use it because Apple gets a hard on forcing people to do stupid things) 0 Share this post Link to post