Justin Frankel (born 1978) is an American

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

best known for his work on the

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel 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 ve ...

media player application and for inventing the

Gnutella Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network protocol. Founded in 2000, it was the first decentralized peer-to-peer network of its kind, leading to other, later networks adopting the model. In June 2005, Gnutella's population was 1.81 million compute ...

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

network. Frankel is also the founder of Cockos Incorporated, which creates music production and development software such as the

REAPER A reaper is a farm implement or person that reaps (cuts and often also gathers) crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reapers that were used in Roma ...

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integr ...

, the NINJAM collaborative music tool and the Jesusonic expandable effects processor. In 2002, he was named in the MIT

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR100 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

Early life

Justin Frankel was born in 1978 and grew up in

Sedona, Arizona Sedona is a city that straddles the county line between Coconino and Yavapai counties in the northern Verde Valley region of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2010 census, its population was 10,031. It is within the Coconino National F ...

. Frankel had an aptitude for computers at an early age. His skill eventually led him to running the student computer network of Verde Valley School, which he attended, as well as writing an

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

application for the students.

Winamp

After graduating high school with a 2.9 GPA, he attended 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 ...

in 1996, where he majored in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

, but dropped out after two quarters. A few months later, he released the first version of

WinAMP Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel 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 ve ...

under his newly formed company's name

Nullsoft Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona, in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. In later years, their open source installer ...

. By 1998, more than fifteen million people had downloaded the program. Since many people had sent in the $10

donation A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as ...

suggested in return for using the program, Frankel earned tens of thousands of dollars a month. Frankel, along with

Tom Pepper Tom Pepper (born August 24, 1975 in Des Moines, Iowa) is a computer programmer best known for his collaboration with Justin Frankel on the Gnutella peer-to-peer system.Oram, Andrew ''Peer-to-peer: harnessing the benefits of a disruptive tech ...

(who played a big part of the Winamp development and distribution), later completed SHOUTcast, which allowed ordinary users with an Internet connection to broadcast, or "

stream A stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long large streams ...

", audio over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

. He also created the

Advanced Visualization Studio Advanced Visualization Studio (AVS), is a music visualization Plug-in (computing), plugin for Winamp. It was designed by Winamp creator, Justin Frankel and was first shipped in version 2.0a4 with Winamp 2.61. ''AVS'' has a customizable design whi ...

, a plugin for Winamp which enabled users to create their own music visualizations in real-time, without any programming knowledge required.

Sale of Nullsoft to AOL

In June 1999

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

simultaneously acquired Nullsoft and

Spinner.com Spinner was an online music and entertainment service. An AOL Music property, it was acquired by AOL on June 1, 1999, along with Nullsoft for $400 million. Based in San Francisco, California, the website was the first Internet music service and w ...

in a combined purchase worth approximately $400 million. In a July 21, 1999 SEC filing by AOL, the transaction was recorded as a payment of 2,863,053 shares of AOL common stock to the 54 stockholders in the two companies being acquired. On July 20, 1999, the last reported sale price for AOL common stock was $113.1875 per share. Frankel's stake of 522,661 shares in the acquisition was worth approximately $59 million.

AOL

On March 14, 2000, Frankel and Nullsoft colleague

released ''

gnutella Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network protocol. Founded in 2000, it was the first decentralized peer-to-peer network of its kind, leading to other, later networks adopting the model. In June 2005, Gnutella's population was 1.81 million compute ...

'', a public peer-to-peer file-sharing application, using Nullsoft's corporate web servers, without AOL's knowledge. Gnutella was a new peer-to-peer file-sharing system like the original

Napster Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Sha ...

system, which was used by users to share their

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 ...

collections with everyone who ran a Napster client. Unlike Napster, however, gnutella allowed users to share any type of file, not just MP3s. It also did not have the

single point of failure A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working. SPOFs are undesirable in any system with a goal of high availability or reliability, be it a business practice, software ap ...

that Napster had: centralized servers that indexed where all the shared content was stored. Whereas Napster could be (and was) shut off just by turning off the centralized index servers owned by Napster, gnutella did not rely on any centralized servers to find out what users had what content, so once a gnutella network was created, it could not be shut off. Since AOL was at the time merging 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 ...

, gnutella seemed like a conflict of interest to Nullsoft's parent company, which knew that Time Warner was one of the parties taking legal action against Napster at the time. AOL ordered gnutella to be taken off the Nullsoft corporate servers. However, thousands of people had already downloaded the software before it was removed from Nullsoft's web site. The source code was released later, supposedly under the GPL. Gnutella continued to be developed without Frankel's assistance, and became one of the most popular peer-to-peer file sharing networks of its time; compatible clients that were developed included BearShare, Morpheus, Gnucleus and LimeWire. AOL watched Frankel very closely after that, taking down other projects that he tried to release to the public, such as an MP3 search engine and a patch for

AOL Instant Messenger AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM w ...

to block advertisements in the application. Frankel threatened to resign on June 2, 2003, after AOL removed his program ''

WASTE Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste pr ...

'', a

private peer-to-peer Private peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are peer-to-peer (P2P) systems that allow only mutually trusted peers to participate. This can be achieved by using a central server such as a Direct Connect hub to authenticate clients. Alternatively, users can ...

file-sharing program, from the Nullsoft

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...

. He stayed with AOL after that in order to complete Winamp version 5.0, a hybrid of the Winamp v2.x series and Winamp v3. On December 9, 2003 AOL shut down Nullsoft's San Francisco offices and laid off 450 employees. Frankel announced his resignation from AOL on January 22, 2004 on his

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

, stating "''Won't repeat it here (in two words: I've resigned). So begins chapter 3... or something cliché/poetic there. Or wait, does I've count as a single word? ha ha.''"

Post-AOL

Some of Frankel's current projects in development (according to his blog) are a programmable effects processor called Jesusonic and a new piece of software named NINJAM which allows several musicians to make music together via the Internet. Under his new company,

Cockos Cockos, Inc is an American digital audio technology company founded in 2004, most notable for their digital audio workstation software REAPER. History Cockos was founded in 2004 by Justin Frankel after his departure from Nullsoft. The company na ...

, he has been developing

, a

Digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integr ...

for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Quotes

* "For me, coding is a form of self-expression. The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have. This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leave." - from a blog posting announcing his resignation from AOL

References

External links

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The World's Most Dangerous Geek
Interviewed by David Kushner; RollingStone.com; January 13, 2004.
Justin Frankel Reveals Life After Winamp
Interviewed by Nate Mook, BetaNews, January 3, 2005.
Turn Off The Internet
A site made by Steve Gedikian and Justin, as a joke.
Interview with Justin Frankel on Winamp and the Reaper
In depth interview on the design and the history of Winamp. Digital Tools, April 2008.

By Lev Grossman, Time, November 24, 2010
Jesusonic / EEL programming reference
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frankel, Justin 1978 births American male bloggers American bloggers Computer programmers American computer businesspeople American Jews Living people People from Sedona, Arizona University of Utah alumni AOL people American technology company founders