Perhaps the main topic of this article is a fond memory for you, perhaps you have not yet moved it to that section or perhaps you do not know what we are going to talk about, but if we think about keys in the history of the digitization of music and the mp3 format, we inevitably have to talk about Winamp’s own history. A software that came to your computer in one way or another to listen to your favorite mp3s and create your lists (eventually).
Let’s forget the flat designhe material design and all the modern interfaces to remember this precedent of other players, which was not strictly the first either. Who created it and what motivations were there? Why was it losing prominence? If you know him, nostalgia will probably invade you for a little while; if you don’t know him, you may know some of the reasons for his decline.
The original broth of Winamp and digital music
The popularization of the Internet, the lowering of its rates and the digitization of music meant that the computer began to take on the role of source and player of our songs. Regarding this, it is impossible to ignore a chapter in this story in which piracy was the order of the day, with protagonists like KaZaA or eMule (perhaps more common and longer in time depending on the country).
In any case, obtaining a significant number of songs in mp3 format made the players much more required and someone thought that what was offered so far (Windows Media Player, Real Player, etc.) did not satisfy the needs or did not give the option to do so, specifically Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev (former students of the University of Utah).
They created the seed of the player, which was a very simple graphical interface to make the use of AMP more comfortable (Advanced Multimedia Productswhich is considered the first *.mp3 player) on Windows systems (a title bar and a menu bar with a few playback commands).
In 1997, Frankel created Nullsoft, his company, and Winamp 1 was released. It was not the only alternative player created to listen to this music format, but it was the one that combined features such as creating playlists or random playback, all in an interface that used to be quite intuitive. It soon became popular, becoming among the most downloaded software in the last 10 years.
What started out as free software ended with version 1.5, at which point the license freeware became sharewareso that users had a 14-day free trial after which they would be obliged to pay 10 dollars. The program became popular to the point that Frankel He earned $100,000 a month. And the success did not go unnoticed by what was a great company at the time, AOL, which bought the software from Nullsoft for $80 millionIn fact, the streaming service and the SHOUTcast protocol also remained.
Versions 0.2 and 0.92 (right).
Winamp version 2.0.
Winamp version 3.0.
The intention was to create a leading online radio platform like Pandora or Last.FM by unifying the catalogs of Winamp and Warner Music, but they did not achieve it (the existence of one and the absence of the other is the proof). This also coincided chronologically with the launch of the iPod and its song sales platform, iTunes, which although it was somewhat behind in the mp3 revolution, had its role in normalizing the purchase of mp3s to the detriment of piracy in the United States.
AOL would eventually dismantle Nullsoft in December 2003, and Frankel left the new parent company in January 2004. In Rocknerd They quote Nullsoft’s Rob Lord regarding the AOL acquisition and what Winamp could have been if it hadn’t been managed by AOL the way it was.
“There is no reason why Winamp is not where iTunes is now other than the mismanagement on AOL’s part that began immediately after the acquisition.” Rob Lord, Nullsoft
A review of the versions
Depending on how familiar Winamp is to you (whether you were a user from the beginning, a recent user or if you have never used it before), one interface or another will have remained in your retina, but the most popular ones may have been from 1.9 onwards, when many new functions and elements were added. on the blog Old Version (now disappeared) made their particular tribute to the app by showing some of the interfaces of these versions that allowed us to recover some images.
As we mentioned before, the first version was 0.2 (April 1997), which already went beyond plain text to present an interface with the basic elements of a player (title, play buttons, bitrate, audio output mode, etc.). The dark gray background that would become a hallmark would come with 0.92, in addition to the top bar with yellow lines, and in 1.0 a graphic equalizer, the list editor, a frequency analyzer and the search bar would be added to this.
Version 1.6 introduced another of the features that was best received: customization. In addition, they were expanding support for different formats, such as MIDI, *.wave and CDswhich arrived with version 1.91. This interface with the equalizer taking up much of it and the playlist screen may be quite familiar to you.
With version 2.0 came the Advanced Visualization Studio (AVS) by default (until then it was a separate plug-in), which allowed you to create rhythm-dependent animations on demand. But it was** in 2002 when Winamp 3** arrived, after the purchase of AOL and completely rewritten at the code level, incorporating a multimedia library, a renewed interface and the only one adapted to Linux of all the existing ones (and video support since 2.9), although there was some rejection as it consumed too many system resources and was somewhat unstable.
The interface of the latest version for Mac has nothing to do with those modules with gray backgrounds in versions starting from 2.0.
With version 5 in December 2003, the Winamp 2 and 3 code bases would converge, trying to include the best of each, with a renewed interface based on that of version 3, supporting the skins of 2, as well as its plug-ins. Later, version 5.5 would coincide with the tenth anniversary in 2007 of the app (called ‘The 10th anniversary edition’), which unified the modules in a single window and added support for languages beyond English.
The goodbye that was left in warning
Did Winamp die? If you had at least one notice of a sentence it was announced end of availability on December 20, 2013after 15 years of existence. An announcement that came after a series of layoffs in April of that year at AOL Music (a division to which Winamp belonged) and the rise of streaming.
When that day came, no, it did not disappear, and what there was was a certain abundance of rumors of its purchase for which names like Microsoft itself sounded. But in the end it was not those from Redmond who put up the capital to keep this part of mp3 history alive, but rather It was the Belgian company Radionomyan online radio network aggregator that already had more than 6,000 radio stations.
However, this purchase did not bring many movements for the famous player and at the end of 2015 it was Vivendi Group who They took over a large part of the shares of Radionomy. At the beginning of 2016 it made headlines that there would be a new version of Winampaimed at polishing it from the libraries for which Radionomy did not have usage rights.
Winamp version 5.5.
Now, a few years later, we are still waiting for that hypothetical version that also would include mobile devicesbut although its version 5.8 was released If you go to his official website You will see that it does not load. In the end those “news on the way” that were promised did not arrive.
From this popular player there were even Android version in 2010 (with last updated in 2013), although today the battle of listening to music in digital format is a matter of streaming Broadly speaking, whether on a computer or mobile devices. The traditional player can still be downloaded and used in Windowsalthough its development has been slow and with irregular changes. The latest modern line is Winamp 5.9, which has been updated to work on recent systems such as Windows 10/11.
Be that as it may, the fact is that Winamp is still alive in the hearts of many users who prioritized customization as a hallmark and the possibilities it offered compared to other software. Although as long as there are those who keep and use it, we have no choice but to end this review post with the phrase that every fan maintains: long live Winamp.
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