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Software America Online Music

Winamp Shutting Down On December 20 400

Posted by Soulskill from the llama-finally-whipped-back dept.
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."
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Winamp Shutting Down On December 20 More

Winamp Shutting Down On December 20

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  • FB2K FTW (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:18PM (#45475469)

    Foobar2000 is great!

    • Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Russ1642 ( 1087959 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:25PM (#45475581)

      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.

      • Re:FB2K FTW (Score:4, Insightful)

        by baka_toroi ( 1194359 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:50PM (#45475897) Journal
        Try managing 150000+ files on Winamp and tell me how it goes. Now try that again with Foobar.
        • I have 80gb of music and winamp works great for me.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

          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:4, Interesting)

            by ottothecow ( 600101 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @06:53PM (#45477107) Homepage
            Yeah. I always loved the winamp media manager.

            It was pretty powerful, and even without the features, I liked the fact that the active playlist was held completely separate from the library (as opposed to say...struggling with itunes). You could search your library at will without changing anything in the playlist. They were in separate windows and the paradigm was pretty clear--you play music in the playing window, you search for music in the library.

            Then, the playlist had ITS OWN INTERNAL MINI PLAYLIST! You could queue up specific tracks to play next (using j or q keyboard shortcuts IIRC). This great, because you could have your playlist on shuffle, but still be able to specify what song you want to hear next, all while still keeping your playlist sorted by artist/album/whatever. Infinitely better than software where the solution to "shuffle" was to actually shuffle your current playlist which makes browsing more difficult.

            I will miss Winamp, but I must confess, I use it far less these days. Spotify has changed the way I listen to music--I no longer acquire music permanently and listen to much of it at work (vs using winamp for many many years as a student). This may not be a good thing...right now I can browse through my music folder and go on a nostalgia trip, much like my parents can flip through their records and CDs...with spotify, I will have to actually remember what I was listening to 15 years ago instead of stumbling across it when I set winamp to "shuffle all". But, it means I have cut out winamp. At work, I use Spotify...and at home mostly listen to music on my HTPC through spotify or XBMC. Winamp only gets used when I am using my desktop for something that doesn't have its own sound (like gaming or editing videos)...which is pretty much only when I work from home.

        • Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @07:21PM (#45477311) Journal

          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.

      • Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:52PM (#45475919) Journal

        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: (Score:3)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          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...

          I've got a task to do here: play music encoded in a format not anticipated by the developer of the player included with the operating system. This format happens to include a music sequence and bytecode for an 8- or 16-bit virtual machine to interpret it, and it has been shown to fit half an hour of music in well under 100 KiB. Make it so.

          • Re:FB2K FTW (Score:5, Interesting)

            by jimshatt ( 1002452 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @07:18PM (#45477291)
            Winamp had plugins for formats not anticipated by the operating system. I once (LONG ago) wrote a simple plugin that executed .bat files, so I could queue OS commands in my playlist (shutdown at the end of the list, etc.). Pretty cool (if I might say so myself :) ).
      • I was a big fan of Winamp and I converted to foobar2000 for my music a few years ago. It's true that it can be cumbersome out of box, but I save my settings and it works for me and it's the only player I use now. It is much different from Winamp, but I like it much better. That being said it isn't for everyone, but if you like to tweak the heck out of things it's your friend. Interesting yet, the guy who wrote foobar used to do some work for the creators of Winamp:

        foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design, breadth of features, and extensive user flexibility in configuration. For example, the user-interface is completely customizable.[5] Its extensive SDK allows third-party developers enough power to completely replace the interface. foobar2000 supports a large number of audio file formats, has many features for organising metadata, files, and folders, and has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. To maximize audio fidelity in cases where resampling or downscaling in bit depth is required, it provides noise shaping and dithering. There are a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. The core is closed source, whereas the SDK is licensed under the BSD license.

        Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar [wikipedia.org]

    • Not as good as Winamp Lite.

      • You should really try AIMP3. I've been using it for years.
        For remote functionality (being able to access your music - and videos - from anywhere) I use PLEX Media Server.

    • there's DeadBeef

  • A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:19PM (#45475483)

    No more llama ass-whipping :(

    • Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:23PM (#45475549)

      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.

      • 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.

        For the purpose of recording it: Same story with Yahoo obtaining Tumblr to buy some continued relevance, since Yahoo itself and its property Flickr have both been fallings stars.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          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.

      • 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.

        This is even bigger news than WinAMP shutting down! AOL has a profitable business unit?!!

    • Where the fuck did that phrase even come from? Is this some bizarre audiophile vernacular thing I've never heard of?

  • A victim of animal cruelty legislation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:20PM (#45475491) Journal
    After all these years, the Llama will finally have its vengeance...

  • I switched to foobar2000 [foobar2000.org] a long time ago as my light weight music player.

    • What's "light weight" about that?

      I'm going to stick with Winamp Lite.

    • If you're looking for lightweight on Windows, check out xmplay. It's sitting at 334.4k. Sounds good, supports a lot of formats, has plugins, skinnable, integrates into your context menu if you want...

      Not affiliated with them but I've used their program happily for years now.

      http://www.un4seen.com/ [un4seen.com]

      • supports a lot of formats

        The only reason I've used Winamp in the past few years is that most of the players for music formats related to classic game consoles have been released as input plug-ins for Winamp. Does XMPlay support NSF (NES), GBS (Game Boy and Game Boy Color), SPC (Super NES), SGC (ColecoVision and Sega), GYM/VGM (Sega logged), PSF (PS1), USF (PS2), GSF (Game Boy Advance), and 2SF (Nintendo DS)? On the XMPlay page, I see "Game Music Emu input plugin", which covers the NSF, GBS, SPC, SGC, GYM, and VGM, but not PSF and f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        xmplay is probably the best module player for windows as well, if you're into the old tracker formats.

  • WinAMP still rocks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CanEHdian ( 1098955 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:23PM (#45475553)
    In "classic" skin you have the good old nice and small interface, and it has excellent 24bit support... Fraunhofer Institute codecs... all sorts of goodies. I wonder what will happen to people who (recently) bought the Pro upgrade...

  • so what should i be using now? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    i guess i was the only one left using it??

    what should i go to now? I mostly played the shoutcast stations along with the music i converted from itunes a few years ago. I also use it exclusively on android.

    • Windows Media Player works for me when I'm at work. The Sonos is good at home.

      I'm sure any other player would work, but WMP is there.

    • Re:so what should i be using now? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Thursday November 21, 2013 @06:46AM (#45479939)

      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.

  • Actually, WinAmp is one of the better music players available for Android. They've made it freemium, trying to get you to pay $30 for an EQ and whatnot, but it's still got one of the better UIs if you want to use your phone as an MP3 player.

    I've switched to RocketPlayer, because I want more format support, like MusePack, AAC, etc., and being able to EDIT those tags you're at the mercy of, in the player is a killer feature, too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

      The one thing I will miss is the fact that Winamp's desktop application and the Winamp Android app can sync with each other. The $30 bones for Winamp premium was well worth it.

      On the desktop, other players and managers have slowly eclipsed it (for example, I've switched to MediaMonkey for general MP3 tagging stuff), but it being gone will definitely leave a gap in the Android audio player market. Hopefully something as good or better can come along (be it free, "freemium", or a commercial app.)

      It is amazi

  • Oh Man- My Lightshow (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gnarfel ( 1135055 ) <anthony.j.fiumara@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:29PM (#45475619) Homepage
    My very first light shows we're done using AVS Studio plugin. It was sick. You could render text, create complicated intricate patterns, specify coloring directly (not just a pass filter over an existing image) and even adjust all of it in real time on a second monitor. Modern VJ apps like arkaos and resolume don't even dent the surface of the on-the-fly stuff you could do in AVS, even if they do have more features overall.

    • Thats one thing I loved about Winamp, all the plugins. Nothing really compares to the visual plugin workshops and the huge selection is awesome. But for simple day 2 day playing of mp3s I've moved onto foobar, I had to tweak a plugin to add ratings to mp3s idtag but its fast and works great.
      For android, poweramp is great and works well with bluetooth metadata. Always thought a full screen classic winamp display on android would have been awesome, but they didnt do that as an option.

      I remember back on my 6

  • Open source it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:29PM (#45475627)

    Just do it.

  • Here's to hoping... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Forbo ( 3035827 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:31PM (#45475651)
    ...that someone who had been working on it "accidentally" leaks the source.

    • Re:Here's to hoping... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:01PM (#45476029) Journal

      ...that someone who had been working on it "accidentally" leaks the source.

      That might actually be a worse result. Unless there are Winamp-specific features/interfaces that are either difficult to clone or near-impossible to get full compatibility with, without the source, leaked-but-unlicensed source would just cast suspicion on any winamp-like projects, and fall into a difficult-to-develop for legal grey area (since the source leak itself would be hot, patchsets would presumably be legal; but actual compilation would require hanging out in warez circles and leave the resulting build illegal to distribute.)

      Kind of like the issues XBMC had, back when they actually supported Xboxes. Their codebase was fine; but the SDK components required to actually do a build, and possibly the builds themselves, depending on exactly how hungry MS legal was feeling, were always illicit and kind of a pain to deal with.

  • Who's going to really whip the Llama's ass now?

    • pfft. wesley willis has been really whipping the llama's ass in heaven for the last decade. same with horses, tigers, ponies, you name it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fliptout ( 9217 )

        I saw him perform in Austin around 2002. My Taiwanese gf and I had a jolly good time. Even better was overhearing guys in another band gripe about how Wesley Willis pulled in more fans than them.

    • Re:Awww (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Internetuser1248 ( 1787630 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:21PM (#45476251)

      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: (Score:3)

        by cffrost ( 885375 )

        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.

        You can get whatever version you want here: http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/ [nullsoft.com]

        I kept this URL since I had some problem (I can't remember) with v5.622+.

  • I have to wonder why AOL bought ICQ and WinAMP. Did any of ICQ end up in AIM?

    • ICQ and AIM are both OSCAR-protocol based; but, to the best of my knowledge, the only common treatment was that AOL was a dick about any 3rd-party implementation of an OSCAR client. Aside from that, AIM basically pretended that ICQ didn't exist, and vice-versa. AOL always was a somewhat puzzling company.

  • I hate AOL (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I hate AOL. I have always hated AOL. AOL shareholders can burn in Hell.

    A Big Fucking Fuck You!

  • Shame on AOL (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:49PM (#45475887)

    ... for taking a great product with a large and growing user base and a lot of potential, then going virtually nowhere with it for year after year after year, until the only thing left to do was to kill it.

    R.I.P. Winamp, you helped define the 90s and let the way for compressed digital formats.

    Let's hope all the specialist plugins for all the legacy/specialist file formats that have been created over the years find a good home with ongoing support.

  • Download Any Version of Winamp (Score:5, Informative)

    by bobbutts ( 927504 ) <bobbutts@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:53PM (#45475927)
    Get your Winamp here:
    http://www.oldapps.com/winamp.php [oldapps.com]

  • I remember when Winamp ruled the earth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wjcofkc ( 964165 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @04:56PM (#45475975)
    It would be nice if companies would automatically open source abandonware, even if they have to strip half the code of anything that infringes on outside patents. Of course, it would be nice if companies would do a lot of nice things. But they don't, and won't - because companies aren't nice.

    • Re:I remember when Winamp ruled the earth (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IndustrialComplex ( 975015 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:38PM (#45476443)

      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.

  • But its still relevant and usable.

  • First I buy Songbird on my phone, and they close down. Then I move on to Winamp, now they are shutting down. I can't seem to catch a break.

  • Aimp is a great replacement (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jagungal ( 36053 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:13PM (#45476167)

    http://www.aimp2.us/

    Been using it for a while. It is like WinAmp without the crud.

  • Winamp was the first player that could handle massive playlists. I could drag a network folder with over 80 GB of music and it would populate the playlist in seconds. I could then randomize and walk through that list without repeats for days. It also played skipless so that live albums didn't have annoying breaks. New players today still can't do that. Sigh. Their android app is pretty good too. I guess I will jump to amazon now. Their cloud playing is great.

  • Where are they now? (Score:4, Informative)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:33PM (#45476383) Homepage Journal

    In case folks were wondering. Frankel and some of the original crew moved on to creating a DAW called Reaper flying under the company name Cockos.
    www.reaper.fm

    If Winamp is only worth $6m today, I'm pretty sure he could buy it back. There's so many things in reaper that have been missing in Winamp for years (namely good ASIO support, the ASIO output plugin for winamp stinks)

  • What about Shoutcast (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kulfaangaren! ( 1294552 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @05:38PM (#45476439)
    Does anyone know if this means they are pulling the plug on Shoutcast as well ? It only says "...associated web services...".

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by captjc ( 453680 )

      God, I hope not. I love Shoutcast. I would be sad to see it go, though, to be fair, podcasting has pretty much taken over as my primary music and radio source.

  • DAE remember Sonique? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Requiem18th ( 742389 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @06:21PM (#45476825)

    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.

  • Will you people please stop whining? (Score:3)

    by mmell ( 832646 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @06:50PM (#45477067)
    Winamp will no longer be updated. Mildly annoying (unless some unknown network exploit renders the current version unsafe for use).

    Winamp will no longer be available at www.winamp.com. Mildly annoying, but old software NEVER disappears from the internet. I can still get copies of many dead programs such as VersaCheck 1.0, DVD X-Copy, even M$ Flight Simulator. Licensing can prevent use of these old versions, but if you happen to have a valid license some basic google-fu should get you the installer (or installer ISO) you need.

    Winamp will still run on the tens of thousands of systems that it's installed on. Users can continue to enjoy their digital music collection while thinking pleasantly about whipping a llama's ass. The icon will remain on the desktop. The Start Menu item will not disappear. MP3's will not magically be set to use a different default application to open.

    In the end, I don't think this is going to cause any great deal of discomfort for the internet community. Hell, might not even get noticed right off (if not for /. shining a spotlight on it).

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