Winamp Bids a Final Farewell In December

[DanielBrown]

Haven't used it in close to ten years, but I do remember it being awesome. I could make different folders within the player to catogorize and shizzle. That shit was huge to me and so much fun.

Anyways, TIL people use VLC as a media player. Thought it only was for showing movies myself!

 

[Estranged180]

Fear not noble Winamp users around the world. I have found a place where older versions can be found, from version .20 to version 5.623. However, we will find out if they remain available when the site, and downloads shut down on the 20th.

As has been said before, Winamp was one of the first things installed on any machine I'd ever built, just so I could listen to some music while installing other things.

The site is http://oldversion.com/

They have old versions of software for PC and Mac.

 

[w00tage]

well snap. I just discovered Winamp for Android, and it's the best internet radio player I have found for my new POS Android phone. I must now figure out how to save it.

 

[SpAc3man]

No sleep lost. No tears shed.

Winamp stagnated and lost relevance years ago. Everyone uses streaming services these days.

 

[Thiel]

But, but, but......what media player will whip the llama's ass now?

I've been using Winamp for over 10 years, and I will definitely be file hoarding the latest version before they go offline.

Winamp, you will be missed.

 

[funkyjiveturkey]

well this sucks. winamp has been the only music player i use. the interface is brilliant and it has a visulalizer like no other i've seen. it supports most any format of audio or video, in addition to having support for burning cd and sync with ipods and other devices. i've literally been using this as my primary music player for as long as i've had a computer. my older brothers had used it as well so it's been installed on my family's home computer literally since it was first released.

a very sad day indeed. goodnight, sweet prince.

 

[Furism]

If you consider yourself a geek, you might want to use foobar2000: http://www.foobar2000.org/

This is hands down the best Media Player available on Windows. It doesn't look very good, but it's 100% customizable. It's got towns of 'components' (add-ons), for instance a UPnP client or Last.fm scrobbler. It's also the only Media Player on Windows able to play using ASIO drivers (for Bit Perfect streaming to a DAc - I did say this is for geek), so if you're into actual Hifi, you want that.

It supports every single audio format known to mankind, it's open source, it's light, and it parses my 50,000+ library, over the network, in about 2 minutes. Even Winamp's media library parsing wasn't as fast as this one.

Hopefully, with the death of Winamp, foobar2000 will pick up more user base and some people will develop nice skins, so users are not pushed away by the looks of the software - again, it looks ugly, but feature-wise it's the most complete media player hands down. I love the way you can customize it to fit your exact needs.

No, I don't participate to the project I just like it very much.

 

[ThetaReactor]

My favorite thing about Winamp is that it's never lost the file-focused behavior. I can throw a big folder of random, horribly-tagged mp3s at it, and it just plays them. It doesn't demand that I add them to a monolithic library, sorting things into a hundred different artist/album categories. I can hit one key to instantly search for a song in a 5000-file playlist, or similarly queue up a dozen tracks in the background. It lets me manage my own stuff. And if I do want to sort and categorize and be anal about everything, I'll use MediaMonkey.

 

[Madman123456]

What this winamp thingy? I'm still using the eagle player on my Amiga...

Seriously, i have a version of winamp which still kept the bloatware in check, somewhat; 2.95. Downloaded the installation file in the late bronze age and never saw any reason to get any other software to play music. Works perfectly fine with any bitrate, even variable and has an enormous number of plugins to play the most obscure formats mankind has long forgotten. Sega master system music? I'm listening to the "Golvellius" music right now.
Let's move it forward to the .sid section of my playlist without minimizing the browser i'm typing in right now. Very useful, these keyboard shortcuts. Especially when you're playing games that crap themselves when minimized. Like Skyrim.

Well, i'm off having some bar brawls while listening to the "International Karate" music

 

[Vie]

I've been on the Winamp forums since 2001, barely active now, but still have it open as my first tab.

I'm tempted to make a full backup of that forum, it would be a shame to loose all the things that are on there.

 

[Zefar]

I don't see how people see it as a bad media player. Using VLC? :/ What? Why people would use that for music? It's a movie player. But unlike Winamp it doesn't show the full file name. Which does come in handy sometimes.

It played the songs I listened to and I got great quality from all of them. Never had a problem with the player. Never felt like it was slow.

It's the first media player I had to use and have been using it since then and this might have been like 13-14 years ago. I'm gonna keep it installed until it actually stops working.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

If they're going to discontinue it I don't see why not make it open-source.

Either way RIP.

Because OMG ITS MINE!!! NO STEELING I WILL TAKE MY COPYRITE TO MY GRAVE!!!

No, but seriously. I'm not some sort of Richard Stallman fanboy but the mentality of people who refuse to open-source their already-free programs genuinely baffles me.

 

[Strazdas]

I used winamp for a very very long time and am sad to see it go. Though i havent had Winamp open in years now as i use FooBar2000 instead. That is one awesome music player.

And hey dont get me started on Itunes, its probably the worst player i have ever encoutered and i tried quite a few.

Bye Bye WinAmp, you were the best... and then VLC came along and basically killed any other player..

VLC is good for videos terrible for music.

OK... But why would I have used it over VLC? What made Winamp so great as to get a heartfelt obituary?

because you wanted to do more than watch videos?

Now we are left with iTunes, which wants to dominate all media on or near your computer. And VLC, which can't remember the last song you listened to.

Try Foobar. It can do what Winamp did and more as far as palying goes. costumziation i never cared much about.
iTunes are evil though. i remember when it decided to "fix" all my tracks to the point i had to delete them all and replace from backup.

 

[Shraggler]

I still use Winamp. Install exe's all over the place from days long gone by.

Winamp is great. No waiting for days to load up your library with pointless metadata (looking at you WMP). Everything was just there. No signing up for some fuckin' account, logging in to listen to music and view stupid album covers or pointless visualizations, waiting for everything you own to populate. Ditch that shit.

For fuck's sake, I just want to listen to music. That's it. iTunes/WMP/etc are like a phonograph player you have to let warm up for 5 minutes before playing a disk. It shouldn't be that complicated and shouldn't include so much useless bullshit.

That's why I used Winamp forever. I never upgraded my version, especially because what seemed to be offered was 'skins' and bloat. Keep it simple. Foobar's in the same boat. Used both interchangeably throughout the years.

It's not iTunes, trying to manage your MP3 player and music licenses, it's hotkey support, modern skin, (gotta look pretty) and ability to play ogg, and mp3 files has earned it a place on the corner of one of my monitors on just about every machine I care to use.

VLC's great for movies, but I never liked to use it for music.

Basically, yeah. I don't give a shit about hotkeys or skins. The latter of which I can't understand a person that bases even part of their decision on what to use/wear/drive/whatever based on what something looks. How some window on the desktop pleases one aesthetically should be way down on the list of priorities; preferably not making the list at all. At least the hotkeys have some sort of pragmatic value.

Unless you're fucking it, looks don't matter.

VLC = movie player, Winamp = music player

KIS.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Wow, can't believe they are getting rid of one of the best music players that I have ever used.

Been using winamp for 13 years and I must not forget to get a backup kit for it.

RIP Winamp...you were one of the good ones.