Monday, October 15, 2018

WINAMP RETURNS!!!!

This is made of awesome.

The charmingly outdated media player Winamp is being reinvented as a platform-agnostic mobile audio app that brings together all your music, podcasts and streaming services to a single location. It's an ambitious relaunch, but the company behind it says it's still all about the millions-strong global Winamp community — and as proof, the original desktop app is getting an official update as well.

For those who don't remember: Winamp was the MP3 player of choice around the turn of the century, but went through a rocky period during Aol ownership (our former parent company) and failed to counter the likes of iTunes and the onslaught of streaming services, and more or less crumbled over the years. The original app, last updated in 2013, still works, but to say it's long in the tooth would be something of an understatement (the community has worked hard to keep it updated, however). So it's with pleasure that I can confirm rumors that substantial updates are on the way.

They can call it "charmingly outdated" all they want, but Winamp has always been my favorite MP3 player. It does everything I want, it doesn't do anything I don't want. I'm really very happy to see it return to run on new operating systems.

Winamp currently doesn't do any of the advertising/spying/"suggesting" that Apple and Google do. It just plays the music. You put it on shuffle, it actually SHUFFLES the songs randomly, like its supposed to.

If they can resist the temptation to put spyware in the new versions, I will be happy to pay money for a copy of Winamp to put on my phone and all my computers. Once upon a time I paid money for the original Pro version, and I'll do it again.

7 comments:

Alyric said...

If they can resist the temptation to put spyware in the new versions(...)

I expect that will happen around the time the first unicorn petting zoo opens. In all likelihood the company doing this is banking on the support for WinAmp to make a quick buck with precisely that kind of spyware.

But I'm a massive cynic, so hey - I could be wrong.

Alyric said...

Addendum: If you don't already have it, I recommend archiving a version of the old WinAmp's installer, just in case it gets harder to find in the future.

The Phantom said...

I've got lots of old versions backed up here and there from years past. Windows 10 managed to break them all of course, but maybe I can get one running on Linux with Wine or something. That would be nice. Then it won't phone home at all.

WiFi Lunchbox Guy said...

Does Winamp have an equivalent of Sonique's COR Tornado background/throbber?

If so, I'll get it in a heartbeat.

WiFi Lunchbox Guy said...

I assume you mean something like this Winamp 5.666 build 3516.

Jonathan H said...

I've been hunting for a good MP3 player for my archived music; the best I have found so far for Android is Google Play Music, whose redeeming feature is better stability than the others I've tried do far.

The Phantom said...

I loaded up the new Winamp, it plays fine on Windows 10. Same as it used to.

I have found Google Play on my Samsung prone to glitching. The MP3 files that play fine on my computer have lots of skips and squeaks on my phone, I think that's down to the player. Looking forward to Winamp for Android. ~:D