Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by

Justin Frankel Justin Frankel (born 1978) is an American computer programmer best known for his work on the Winamp media player application and for inventing the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. Frankel is also the founder of Cockos Incorporated, which creates ...

and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large

online community An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...

. Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997, and quickly grew popular with over 3 million downloads, paralleling the developing trend of

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

(music)

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

. Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

ed Windows applications. By 2000, Winamp had over 25 million registered users and by 2001 it had 60 million users. A poor reception to the 2002 rewrite, Winamp3, was followed by the release of Winamp 5 in 2003, and a later release of version 5.5 in 2007. A now-discontinued version for Android was also released, along with early counterparts for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

. Winamp 5.8 (written as Winamp 5.

\infin

) was leaked to the general public in 2018. The Radionomy team decided to release the version themselves to maintain security levels. Radionomy later announced their intention to eventually release Winamp 6. Winamp 5.9 was released on 9th September 2022 with mostly under the hood updates.

Features

; Playback formats: Winamp supports music playback using

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

, MOD,

MPEG-1 MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...

audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV, and WMA. Winamp was one of the first widely used music players on Windows to support playback of

Ogg Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...

by default. It supports gapless playback for MP3 and AAC and

ReplayGain ReplayGain is a proposed technical standard published by David Robinson in 2001 to measure and normalize the perceived loudness of audio in computer audio formats such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. It allows media players to normalize loudness for indi ...

for volume leveling across tracks. CD support includes playing and importing music from audio CDs, optionally with

CD-Text CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows storage of additional information (e.g. album name, song name, and artist name) on a standards-compliant audio CD. The specification for CD ...

, and burning music to CDs. The standard version limits maximum burn speed and datarate; the "Pro" version removes these limitations. Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video and

Nullsoft Streaming Video Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV) was a media container designed for streaming video content over the Internet. NSV was developed by Nullsoft, the makers of Winamp. The NSV format is another example of streaming video formats, offered by various co ...

. For MPEG Video, AVI, and other unsupported video types, Winamp uses Microsoft's

DirectShow DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...

API for playback, allowing playback of most of the video formats supported by Windows Media Player. 5.1

Surround sound Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener (surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to s ...

is supported where formats and decoders allow. ; Media Library: At installation, Winamp scans the user's system for media files to add to the ''Media Library'' database. It supports full

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

filenames and Unicode metadata for media files. In the ''Media Library'' user interface pane, under ''Local Media'', several selectors (''Audio'', ''Video'', date, and frequency) permit display of subsets of media files with greater detail. ; Adding album art and track tags: ''Get Album Art'' permits retrieval of cover art, and confirmation before adding the image to the database. ''Autotagging'' analyzes a track's audio using the

Gracenote Gracenote, Inc. is a company owned by Nielsen Holdings that provides music, video and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies, worldwide. Formerly CDDB ("Compact Disc Data Ba ...

service and retrieves the song's ID2 and ID3 metadata. ; Podcatcher: Winamp can also be used as an RSS media feeds aggregator capable of displaying articles, downloading, or playing such content as streaming media.

SHOUTcast Wire A podcast is a program Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and ...

provides a directory and RSS subscription system for

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

s. ; Media player device support: Winamp has extendable support for portable media players and Mass Storage Compliant devices, Microsoft PlaysForSure, and ActiveSync, and syncs unprotected music to the iPod. ; Media Monitor: Winamp ''Media Monitor'' allows web-based browsing and bookmarking music blog websites and automatically offering for streaming or downloading all MP3 files there. The ''Media Monitor'' is preloaded with music blog URLs. ; Winamp Remote: ''Winamp Remote'' allows remote playback (streaming) of unprotected media files on the user's PC via the Internet. ''Remote'' adjusts bitrate based on available bandwidth, and can be controlled by web interface, Wii,

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

, and mobile phones. ; Plug-ins: In February 1998, Winamp was rewritten as a "general-purpose audio player" with a plug-in architecture. This feature was received well by reviewers. Development was early, diverse, and rapid: 66 plugins were published by November 1998. The ''Winamp

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

(SDK)'' allows software developers to create seven different types of plug-ins. :*''Input'': decodes specific file formats. :*''Output'': sends data to specific devices or files. :*'' Visualization'': provides sound activated graphics. :*'' DSP/Effect'': manipulates audio for special effects. :*''General Purpose'' plug-ins add convenience or UI features (''Media Library'', ''alarm clock'', or ''pause when logged out''). :*''Media Library'' plug-ins add functions to the Media Library plug-in. :*''Portables'' plug-ins support portable media players. Milkdrop Spikeball

:Plug-in development support increased Winamp's flexibility for, for example, a plethora of specialized plug-ins for game

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

music files such as NSF, USF, GBS, GSF, SID, VGM, SPC, PSF, and PSF2. ; Skins: Skins are bitmap files which alter the aesthetic design of the Winamp

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...

(GUI) and can add functionality with scripting. Winamp published documentation on skin creation in 1998 with the release of Winamp 2 and invited Winamp users to publish skins on Winamp.com. As of 2000 there were nearly 3,000 Winamp skins available. The ability to use skins contributed to Winamp's popularity early in MP3 development. With the increasing number of available skins,

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

s or categories of skins developed, such as "Stereo", "Anime", and "Ugly". Online communities of skin designers such as 1001Skins.com and Skinz.org have contributed thousands of designs; also at GnomeArt. Designers see skins as an opportunity to be creative: nontraditional examples have included

Klingon The Klingons ( ; Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a fictional species in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''. Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the original ''Star Trek'' (''TOS'') series, Klingons were swarthy humanoids c ...

, iPod, and

Etch-a-sketch Etch A Sketch is a mechanical drawing toy invented by André Cassagnes of France and subsequently manufactured by the Ohio Art Company. It is now owned by Spin Master of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. An Etch A Sketch has a thick, flat gray screen in ...

designs. The Winamp skin format is the most popular, the most commonly adopted by other media player software, and is usable across platforms. One example is the XMMS player for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

and

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

systems, which can use unmodified Winamp 2 skin files. Winamp 5 supports two types of skins – "classic" skins designed to Winamp 2 specifications (static collections of

bitmap image In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: ...

s), and more flexible, freeform "modern" skins per the Winamp3 specification. Modern skins support true

alpha channel In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...

transparency, scripting control, a docked toolbar, and other innovations to the user interface.

History

Initial releases

Winamp was first released in 1997, when

and Dmitry Boldyrev, formerly students at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

, integrated their

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

user interface with the Advanced Multimedia Products ("AMP") MP3 file playback engine. The name Winamp (originally spelled WinAMP) was a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words The minimalist WinAMP 0.20a was released as freeware on April 21, 1997. Its windowless, menu bar-only interface showed only play (open), stop, pause, and unpause functions. A file specified on the command line or dropped onto its icon would be played. MP3 decoding was performed by the AMP decoding engine developed by Advanced Multimedia Products co-founder Tomislav Uzelac, which was free for non-commercial use. It was compatible with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

and Windows NT 4.0. Winamp was the second

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

MP3 player for Windows, the first being

WinPlay3 WinPlay3 was the first real-time MP3 audio player for PCs running Windows, both 16-bit (Windows 3.1) and 32-bit (Windows 95). Prior to this, audio compressed with MP3 had to be decompressed prior to listening. It was released by Fraunhofer IIS ...

. WinAMP 0.92 was released as a freeware in May 1997. Within the standard Windows frame and menu bar, it had the beginnings of the "classic" Winamp GUI: dark gray rectangle with silver 3D-effect transport buttons, a red/green volume slider, time displayed in a green LED font, with track name, MP3 bitrate, and "mixrate" in green. Overlength title appear as slowly scrolling text (or "marquee").. The skeuomorphic design somewhat resembles shelf stereos. There was no position bar, and a blank space where the

spectrum analyzer A spectrum analyzer measures the magnitude of an input signal versus frequency within the full frequency range of the instrument. The primary use is to measure the power of the spectrum of known and unknown signals. The input signal that most co ...

and

waveform analyzer An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...

would later appear. Multiple files on the command line or dropped onto its icon were enqueued in the playlist.

Winamp 1

Version 1.006 was released June 7, 1997, renamed "Winamp", i.e., with "amp" now in lowercase. It showed a spectrum analyzer and color-changing volume slider, but no waveform display. The AMP non-commercial license was included in its help menu. According to Tomislav Uzelac, Frankel licensed the AMP 0.7 engine June 1, 1997. Frankel formally founded Nullsoft Inc. in January 1998 and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware. Despite the fact that there would be no extra features by paying $10, Winamp's popularity and warm reception brought Nullsoft $100,000 a month that year from $10 paper checks in the mail from paying users. In March, Brian Litman, managing co-founder with Uzelac of Advanced Multimedia Products, which by then had been merged into PlayMedia Systems, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nullsoft, claiming unlawful use of AMP. Nullsoft responded that they had replaced AMP with Nitrane, Nullsoft's proprietary decoder, but Playmedia disputed this. Third-party reviews found that Nitrane had bugs that resulted in playing back MP3s incorrectly, and that this resulted in unstable tones being added to the playback, and undoubtedly therefore violated the ISO standard. This also means that Nitrane was unlikely to have been based on the AMP software, and was more likely evidence of a hastily written MP3 decoder that didn't concern itself with standards compliance. Version 1.90, released March 31, 1998, was the first release as a general-purpose audio player, and documented on the Winamp website as supporting plugins, of which it included two input plugins (''MOD'' and ''MP3'') and a visualization plugin. The installer for Version 1.91, released 18 days later, included ''wave'', ''cdda'', and ''Windows tray handling'' plugins, as well as the famous

Wesley Willis Wesley Lawrence Willis (May 31, 1963 – August 21, 2003) was an American musician and visual artist. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989, Willis began a career as an underground singer-songwriter in the outsider music tradition. Wil ...

-inspired DEMO.MP3 file ''"Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass"''. By July 1998, Winamp's various versions had been downloaded over three million times.

Winamp 2

Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The new version improved the usability of the playlist, made the equalizer more accurate, and introduced more plug-ins. The modular windows for playlist and equalizer now matched the player's skin and could be moved around and be separated or "docked" to each other anywhere in any order. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most

ed pieces of software for

. By the end of 1998, there were already over 60 plugins and hundreds of skins made for the software. PlayMedia filed a federal lawsuit against Nullsoft in March 1999. In May 1999, PlayMedia was granted an injunction by Federal Judge A. Howard Matz against distribution of Nitrane by Nullsoft, and the same month the lawsuit was settled out-of-court with licensing and confidentiality agreements. Soon after, Nullsoft switched to an

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

decoder from the

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft The Fraunhofer Society (german: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., lit=Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is a German research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany ...

, the developers of the MP3 format. Winamp 2.10, released March 24, 1999, included a new version of the "Llama" ''demo.mp3'' featuring a musical sting and

bleating Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated s ...

. Nullsoft was purchased by AOL in June 1999 for $80 million in stock, with Nullsoft becoming a subsidiary. AOL itself merged with

Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...

in 2000. Nullsoft relaunched the Winamp-specific winamp.com in December 1999 to provide easier access to skins, plug-ins, streaming audio, song downloads, forums, and developer resources. As of June 22, 2000, Winamp surpassed 25 million registrants.

Winamp3

The next major Winamp version, Winamp3 (so spelled to include ''mp3'' in the name and to mark its separation from the Winamp 2 codebase), was released on August 9, 2002. It was a complete rewrite of version 2, newly based on the

Wasabi Wasabi ( Japanese: , , or , ; ''Eutrema japonicum'' or ''Wasabia japonica'') or Japanese horseradish is a plant of the family Brassicaceae, which also includes horseradish and mustard in other genera. The plant is native to Japan and the Russi ...

application framework, which offered additional functionality and flexibility. Winamp3 was developed parallel to Winamp 2, but "many users found it consumed too many system resources and was unstable (or even lacked some valued functionality, such as the ability to count or find the total duration of tracks in a playlist)". Winamp3 had no

backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especiall ...

with Winamp 2 plugins, and the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported. No Winamp3 version of SHOUTcast was ever released. In response to users reverting to Winamp 2, Nullsoft continued the development of Winamp 2 to versions 2.9 and 2.91 in 2003, even alluding to it humorously. The

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

s 2.92 and 2.95 were released with the inclusion of some of the functionality of the upcoming Winamp 5. During this period the

cross-platform application framework and skinnable

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

toolkit was derived from parts of the Winamp3 source code. For

, Nullsoft released an

alpha version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

of Winamp3 on October 9, 2001, but has not updated it despite continued user interest. During this time Winamp faced stiff competition from

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

's iTunes.

Winamp 5

Winamp 5 was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, but with Winamp3 features such as modern skins incorporated via a plugin, thus incorporating the main advantages of both products. Regarding the omission of a version 4, Nullsoft joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" ("4 skin" being a pun on

foreskin In male human anatomy, the foreskin, also known as the prepuce, is the double-layered fold of skin, mucosal and muscular tissue at the distal end of the human penis that covers the glans and the urinary meatus. The foreskin is attached to the ...

). It was also joked that "Winamp 5 is so good they skipped a number" and "Winamp 2+3=5,". Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003. A blue themed "Modern" skin became the default interface. The media library was improved, CD burning and ripping was introduced, and other additions. The original Nullsoft team quit in 2004. As of version 5.1, Winamp development is credited to Ben Allison (Benski) and Maksim Tyrtyshny. From version 5.2 onwards, support for synchronizing with an iPod is built-in.

Winamp 5.5

Winamp 5.5: The 10th Anniversary Edition was released on October 10, 2007, ten years after the first release of Winamp (a preview version had been released on September 10, 2007). New features to the player included album art support, improved localization support (with several officially localized Winamp releases, including German, Polish, Russian, and French), and a new default interface skin called "Bento" which unlike the previous skins is a unified player and media library in one window as opposed to a multi-window interface. This version dropped support for

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS, both of which were updated in su ...

Winamp 5.6

Winamp 5.6 was released in November 2010 and features Android Wi-Fi support and direct mouse wheel support. Fraunhofer AAC codec with VBR encoding support was implemented. Moreover, the option to write ratings to tags (for MP3, WMA/WMV,

Ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

, and FLAC) was added. Hungarian and Indonesian installer translations and language packs were added. With the release of Winamp version 5.66 on November 20, 2013, AOL announced that Winamp.com would shut down on December 20, 2013, and Winamp would cease to be offered for download after that date. Five days later, version 5.666 was released with the "Pro" and "Full" installers being one and the same, in the process removing OpenCandy, Emusic, AOL Search, and AOL Toolbar from the installation bundle. This was announced to be the last release of Winamp from AOL/Nullsoft.

Winamp 5.7

There was a Winamp 5.7 beta program for an invitation-based Winamp Cloud feature, which would let Winamp play a user's entire cloud-stored music library across all supported devices. This feature would have allowed AOL to provide a music locker service that would essentially compete with other online music lockers. The beta program was cancelled months before the announcement to shut down the Winamp project.

Acquisition by Radionomy

On November 20, 2013, AOL announced that it would shut down Winamp.com on December 20, 2013, and the software would no longer be available for download nor supported by the company after that date. The following day, an unofficial report surfaced that

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

was in talks with AOL to acquire Nullsoft. Despite AOL's announcement, the Winamp site was not shut down as planned, and on January 14, 2014, it was officially announced that Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy had bought the Nullsoft brand, which includes Winamp and SHOUTcast. No financial details were publicly announced. However,

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...

has reported that the sale of Winamp and Shoutcast is worth between $5 and $10 million, with AOL taking a 12% stake (a financial, not strategic, investment) in Radionomy in the process. Radionomy relaunched the Winamp website, and it was available for download again. In December 2015,

Vivendi Vivendi SE is a French mass media holding company headquartered in Paris. Widely known as the owner of Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Editis, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village and Dailymotion, the company has activities in television, film, video ...

bought a majority stake in Radionomy. Following Radionomy's acquisition, no new releases would officially surface until Winamp 5.8 in 2018.

Winamp 5.8

In September 2018, it was reported that a Winamp 5.8 beta build 3563 was leaked to various file-sharing sites. The leaked build, bearing a build date of October 26, 2016, would be the first public build under Radionomy's umbrella, with changes including compatibility with Windows 8.1, 10 and 11, and the removal of the paid Winamp Pro. Following the leak, Radionomy officially released Winamp 5.8 build 3660 on October 18, 2018.

Winamp 5.9

Winamp 5.9 was released on September 9, 2022, with mostly under-the-hood improvements. The development team migrated the project from

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

2008 to Visual Studio 2019, in addition to improving support for Windows 11,

high-resolution audio High-resolution audio (high-definition audio or HD audio) is a term for audio files with greater than 44.1 kHz sample rate or higher than 16-bit audio bit depth. It commonly refers to 96 or 192 kHz sample rates. However, there also ex ...

, and playback of

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...

streams. The minimum supported operating system was increased to

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

SP1. On December 6, 2022, Winamp 5.9.1 was released, adding a music NFT playback feature. Users are able to add music NFTs on Ethereum and Polygon to the media library by connecting to the Metamask wallet.

Winamp 6

On October 15, 2018, Radionomy's CEO Alexandre Saboundjian announced that a new version of Winamp – Winamp 6 – would be released in 2019. As of August 2022, there has been no release or further details about what this new version of Winamp will look like, including which services Winamp would support or how the new version of the app would integrate with newer music platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify.

On other platforms

Android

Samsung Captivate Glide - SGH-I927 - 011

''Winamp for Android'' is a mobile version for the Android (version 2.1) operating system, released in beta in October 2010 with a stable release in December 2010. It includes syncing with Winamp desktop (ver. 5.59 beta+) over USB or Wi-Fi. It was received with some enthusiasm in the consumer blog press. The app was removed from the

Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating syst ...

in 2014. It was reported by TechCrunch that a redesigned Android app was planned alongside the announcement of the development of Winamp 6.

Macintosh

In 1997 Nullsoft also released

MacAmp MacAmp is an early GUI-based MP3 audio player, first released on April 13, 1997, for the Macintosh("For the Macintosh, we recommend MacAmp.") by Dmitry Boldyrev of Nullsoft (and later Subband).("Dmitry Boldyrev, one of the developers at Nullsoft ...

, an

equivalent of Winamp. In October 2011, ''Winamp Sync for Mac'' was introduced as a beta release. It is the first Winamp version for the

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

platform and runs under version 10.6 and above. Its focus is on syncing the Winamp Library to Winamp for Android and the iTunes Music Library (hence the name, "Winamp Sync for Mac"). Nonetheless, a full Winamp Library and player features are included. The developer's blog stated that the ''Winamp Sync for Mac Beta'' would pave the way for future Winamp-related development on Mac and a fully featured media player as Winamp on Windows. However no further development occurred.

Linux

An early alpha preview of Winamp3 for desktop

was developed in October 2001, but the project was not pursued. Nonetheless some versions of Winamp for Windows are functional using

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

MS-DOS

DOSamp for

operating systems was released in 1997. The software was soon abandoned by Nullsoft to focus on the Windows version (Winamp).

Easter eggs

Winamp has historically included a number of

Easter eggs Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian feast of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are common during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The oldest tra ...

: hidden features that are accessible via undocumented operations. One example is an image of

, one of Winamp's original authors, hidden in Winamp's About dialog box. The included Easter eggs have changed with versions of Winamp, and over thirty have been documented elsewhere.

Derivative works

''Unagi'' is the codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp core technologies. AOL announced in 2004 that Unagi would be incorporated into ''AOL Media Player (AMP)'', in development. After beta testing, ''AMP'' was discontinued in 2005, but portions lived on in AOL's Web-based player. An

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

-based web player resembling the graphical user interface of Winamp 2 has been developed.

References

External links

Winamp Forums

Winamp Skin Museum
{{Aggregators 1997 software Radionomy Audio software Jukebox-style media players IPod software Online music database clients Streaming software Tag editors Windows CD ripping software Windows CD/DVD writing software Windows media players