Winamp Shutting Down On December 20 400
New submitter Cid Highwind writes "If you want to download the latest version of Winamp, you'd better do it soon. According to a new banner on the download page, AOL will be pulling the plug on the iconic llama-whipping music player in a month. 'Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.' Ars Technica ran an article last year detailing how the music player lost its dominance."
A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
No more llama ass-whipping :(
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, looks like AOL finally managed to kill it.
Lets face it, everyone thought this was going to happen years ago when AOL first bought it, its amazing its JUST NOW being shut down, though according to the article it appears to be a profitable business unit and AOL is just shutting it down to cut off its own nose.
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't. You collect pieces of Foobar and put them together to try to get something that acts sort of like a music player.
Open source it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just do it.
Re:dear aol, (Score:4, Insightful)
Just an updated version of NSIS that supported MSI, MSP and MSU files would make NullSoft a profitable company within months.
Re:a sad day we foresaw (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate to admit it (okay, not really) that I knew this was going to happen when AOL bought WinAmp... since it was AOL that was waning in popularity and WinAmp that was flying high.
It took almost 15 years for your prediction to come true. I don't consider that a useful prediction.
I hate AOL (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate AOL. I have always hated AOL. AOL shareholders can burn in Hell.
A Big Fucking Fuck You!
Re:I stopped caring about winamp in early 2000's (Score:5, Insightful)
Your loss.
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't. You collect pieces of Foobar and put them together to try to get something that acts sort of like a music player.
I think that we are seeing the fundamental collision between the "Freedom is good, freedom indistinguishable from Turing completeness is better!" camp and the "I've got a task to do here, Make It So." camp...
In the context of a relatively prosaic problem like music playing, I'm more inclined to sympathize with the latter camp (though not to the extent of some shit like iTunes); though my sympathy for the former camp leads me to desire an ideal solution that would consist of a sane set of default pieces of Foobar, more or less approximating WinAmp, with the option to go down to the basement and tamper with the advanced EQ settings, custom plugins, audio-oriented LISP implementation, etc.
Re:Huh? Color me confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when Winamp ruled the earth (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awww (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's going to really whip the Llama's ass now?
Winamp... I don't understand why people think it is going to suddenly disappear. I haven't needed to update winamp in years, I only have a newer version because I sometimes lose the installer. What exactly is going to change that will make me need a new music player? My music is still all in mp3 format, I don't use any of winamp's online services. The program is finished and complete. I don't need support from AOL and I never did. In a few years there will be new developments and winamp will slowly become obsolete, but those same new developments will result in new software being developed that caters to them. I really don't see the problem here. Winamp will be able to play me mp3s until I no longer need to listen to them or my OS no longer has windows 7 compatibility mode.
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
A society that only satisfies the lowest common denominator is no society I'd want to live in. foobar is targeted at digital audio fans. Everyone else uses whatever default their OS assigns.. It's nice to know that foobar is quick and efficient even for those who don't have that many files.
What about Shoutcast (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I remember when Winamp ruled the earth (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a matter of nice, doing something like that costs money. If it were as simple as dumping the code on the web, a lot might actually do that if just for the PR boost, but going through the code to make sure you didn't accidentally publish something that was later bought up by some patent/copyright troll is an expensive and risky prospect.
If you are asking people to take a risk for you, it's only fair that you compensate them for the risk.
DAE remember Sonique? (Score:4, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player) [wikipedia.org]
Skinned media players were awesome in the Windows 98 era. Nowadays OSs look fine enough that skins are a nuisance.
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:3, Insightful)
It's funny you say that because the one thing that kept me from moving from Winamp to Foobar was the Winamp media manager. It's just so much better than what comes with Foobar. I get the impression you can make Foobar as good if you spend time finding plugins and hacking the UI, but I just want something that works and gives me bit perfect output via WASAPI.
Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)
Try managing 150000+ files on Winamp and tell me how it goes. Now try that again with Foobar.
I've been using winamp since i discovered it in the early 2000's and I still prefer to use my own directory setup to any file/music management interface a player has.
Sorry to see it going, but then I always use the free version, so I'm part of the problem I guess.
I'm more surprised that Aol is still around honestly.
Crowdfund the code's purchase, then open it (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no way that AOL is going to just give away the code even if they're not currently planning on using it -- the best chance is to find out how much money they'd want in exchange for the source if the buyer'ssole intent is to crowdfund its purchase in order to open it for historical archiving & public use. Tech history orgs might even be willing to donate because of WinAmp's historical importance.
Someone with experience crowdfunding &handling the open-sourcing of proprietary projects should be involved, so the chance isn't blown by inexperience. For example, they might know whether AOL is more likely to agree to the sale if the logos/name or other elements are left out of the deal.
Re:so what should i be using now? (Score:5, Insightful)
For the time being why not just keep using WinAMP? They're not remotely disabling all installations of the program, they're just removing all ability to get more updates or even to get the install file. From them, at least. I'm sure it'll be floating around for ages.
If WinAMP works perfectly for you right now it's a reasonable bet it will continue to do so for at least a few years down the line. It's not like the mp3 spec is changing weekly, for instance, and that collection of music sitting on your hard drive? So long as you don't re-rip it to the latest and greatest codec those files aren't going to change. If they work today in WinAMP, they will work in WinAMP in twenty years.