Winamp Purchased By Radionomy 188
Major Blud writes "TechCrunch is reporting that Radionomy has purchased both Winamp and Shoutcast from AOL for $5-10 million and a 12% stake in the company. Radionomy CEO Alexandre Saboundjian said, 'We want to rebuild the story for Winamp. We think the future can be great because the strategy is not just desktop but mobile and cars and so much more.'"
Here's hoping... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's hoping they start by PROPERLY supporting FLAC, including 24/192 media.
The plugins currently available flat out do not work. And I hate using VLC for music.
There's nothing that makes winamp great or unique (Score:5, Insightful)
I hang out with the old nullsoft guys in IRC. General consensus for most of them is "We've moved on" The other concensus is, "There are so many good media players these days"
There was a time when Winamp mattered. There was no decent media players (in some regards, it was a new concept) Winamp brought skinning, plugins, visualizations and a whole slew of things that most folks never even knew they wanted or needed.
Funny that they mention Songbird today. One Nullsofter went there after the AOL buyout. He's now at google.
As far as Frankel, he started working on a DAW called Reaper. It's a swiss army knife for audio.
Re:Here's hoping... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have no problem with VLC for music
Does VLC play MOD, S3M, XM, IT, or other tracked formats? Does VLC play NSF, SGC, GBS, VGM, SPC, PSF, USF, PSF2, GSF, 2SF, or any other video game console-oriented formats? All of the above have Winamp input plug-ins.
Anyone know anything about Radionomy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone know anything about Radionomy? I still use win-amp at work, despite the bloat. I like the small 'strip' interface I can put up at the top of my window and I really haven't found a replacement, so I'd like to know if I can expect things to get better.. or worse.
Re:Here's hoping... (Score:4, Insightful)
You might notice he said "I have no problem". That does not mean it works for everyone else. all of your listed formats are rather obsure, and most people would have no need for a player supporting them. Why do people always have to put down what works for someone else just because it does not support what they want?
Re:There's nothing that makes winamp great or uniq (Score:2, Insightful)
It's funny that you mention those. In a way, we've come full circle. I get the feeling that most people don't really care about whether or not they can skin their music player anymore (the more out of the way it is, the better.. it's something for the background, not to show off to friends), nevermind visualizations (I don't see much demand for visualizations for Pandora on any of the platforms that have a Pandora app). Maybe that still sees some use with some (self-proclaimed) DJs, but I can't say I've seen it used in a very long time. Plugins are similarly dying a slow death. Think of video players.. how many have plugins to support some manner of format? Most of them either read them out of the box (think VLC) or rely on a 'codec pack' (with FFDShow or LAV) being installed to read everything.. and let practically any other media player read them as well.
Codec pack == input plug-ins (Score:5, Insightful)
Plugins are similarly dying a slow death. Think of video players.. how many have plugins to support some manner of format? Most of them either read them out of the box (think VLC) or rely on a 'codec pack' (with FFDShow or LAV) being installed
What do you think the "codec pack" is? As I understand it, a codec pack is just a curated set of input plug-ins.
Re:Here's hoping... (Score:0, Insightful)
Foobar2000.
I used to use winamp for years before I switched to foobar2000, plays flac 24bit 192Khz out of the box no problem (I just confirmed this by googling for a test file to try). It has a wealth of plugins, although maybe not quite as much as winamp; you may still need to keep winamp handy for obscure formats. Very little bloat, just to compare the latest version of each (windows install executable), winamp - 16.4MB, foobar - 3.6MB. It's not pretty like winamp, its just functional.
Re:Here's hoping... (Score:5, Insightful)
> the interface doesn't shrink down to as small as Winamp / Audacious can
And this is most of the reason why I use winamp on all my machines, and have for over 15 years. Winamp in shrunk mode, with the shrunk playlist attached to it, always sits in the top left corner of my screen. All the important controls are visible, time left to end of song, and the playlist gives the title if I skip forward (or forget what that song is called). From there it's only a couple clicks for >99% of my needs.
Need me? Wrist twitch sends mouse top left corner - click - press C to pause ($5 keyboards, no fancy buttons) - "how can I help?" (probably reliably under 2 seconds from disruption to mute, by now)
All that convenience and it doesn't even cover a third of the top icon row. I don't need to shrink other windows to fit my full-featured player.
Can you name another player that small? (I'm assuming single-key shortcuts are common.)
the other main reason to keep winamp is that I have my own filing system and too many players want "libraries". Winamp just plays the files wherever they are, and doesn't make catalogs or whatever.