Tales In Tech History: Winamp

Despite this, Winamp3’s support for Nullsoft’s NSV format made it the player of choice for many early Internet Video channels.

By then however, the developers had realised their mistake, as users deserted at an alarming rate. Nullsoft therefore took the decision to scrap the Winamp3 code-base and instead reverse engineered  the few popular features in version 3 back into Winamp 2.

December 20003 saw the merging of the Winamp 2 and 3 code-bases with the release of Winamp 5, which was well received by users thanks to support being reinstated for thousands of existing Winamp 2 skins.

And Winamp’s popularity at this stage was such as that many iPod users chose to manage their devices with Winamp rather than iTunes, much to Apple’s annoyance. This was because since version 5.2 onwards, support for synchronising with an iPod had been included.

Software Legacy

It is fair to say that the Winamp software was commonly regarded as one of the most popular media players of all time, and was one of the most popular Windows applications generally.

It was ported to Android in October 2010 and Mac OS in October 2011.

But the player began to receive some of the old criticisms of the past, as it increasingly became bundled with growing amounts of ad-ware. Another issue was the ending of encoding and CD burning support (only available by purchasing the often-advertised ‘Winamp Pro’).

Later versions also used increasing amounts of RAM and disk space, which led to the popularity of more lightweight media players such as VLC.

With the release of Winamp version 5.66 in November 2013, AOL announced that Winamp.com would shut down on December 2013. Yet despite AOL’s announcement, the Winamp site was not shut down as planned.

Instead in January 2014 Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy bought the Nullsoft brand, for an undisclosed amount (thought to be between $5m to $10m).

In Conclusion

Over the years Winamp has historically included a number of Easter eggs (at least 30 of them) in its package, including an image of Justin Frankel, one of Winamp’s original authors, hidden in Winamp’s About box.

Winamp is currently not available as it is being “heavily redeveloped”. It has been for a number of years now. That said, the December 2013 version of Winamp is apparently still downloadable and works.The Android version is no longer in the Google Play store.

And finally, as Winamp played such an important part in the MP3 revolution, it is also worth noting that in May this year the Fraunhofer Institute, the German company responsible for the development of MP3, said that the format, including the licensing for its patents and software, has been terminated.

This means that while MP3 users will still be able to listen to their digital music collections, the end is nigh for the format as it has been put out to pasture and support for it will cease.

Interested in legacy technology, then why not check out our Tales in Tech History articles?