WinPlay3 was the first

real-time Real-time, realtime, or real time may refer to: Computing * Real-time computing, hardware and software systems subject to a specified time constraint * Real-time clock, a computer clock that keeps track of the current time * Real-time Control Syst ...

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 under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

audio player for PCs running

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

,"1995: (...) In the same year, Fraunhofer provides a first PC based Layer 3 codec as shareware."— 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 The Fraunhofer Society () is a German publicly-owned research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science (as opposed to the Max Planck Society, which works primarily on basic sc ...

("Institute for Integrated Circuits"), creators of the

format, on September 9, 1995. The latest version was released on May 23, 1997. In 2000, the program was discontinued and all information and downloads were removed from the Fraunhofer IIS website. The program became popular thanks to the

warez scene The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is an underground network of piracy groups specialized in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media before their official release date. The Scene distributes all forms of digital media, incl ...

. The first

warez Warez refers to pirated software and other copyrighted digital media—such as video games, movies, music, and e-books—illegally distributed online, often after bypassing digital rights management (DRM). The term, derived from “software wa ...

group to bring WinPlay3 to attention of a wider audience was Compress Da Audio. They released MP3 rips of CDs, with copies of WinPlay3 included, on several

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

-based warez sites. Rabid Neurosis emerged shortly afterwards, after which the scene exploded. Until the release of

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), 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 Rad ...

in 1997, WinPlay3 was the sole option for playing MP3-compressed music on Microsoft Windows. Unlike modern audio programs, such as Winamp or

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

, it lacked advanced features such as equalizers, or

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. ...

s as a menu option, and concentrated mostly on playback. A

can be created by hand, however, in a simple

text file A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flat file) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In ope ...

listing the system

path A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desir ...

to each MP3 and saving the file with an M3U extension. The m3u playlist support made it the first widely available media player application that offered a well-integrated streaming experience for the web user. Clicking a link on a webpage launched WinPlay3, which would start a stream of the mp3 listed in the m3u file.

References

External links

WinPlay3 Version V2.3 beta5
23.05.1997 (Fraunhofer-IIS)
FhG IIS WinPlay3
on Really Rare Wares (September 1995 through May 1997) (16- and 32-bit versions) {{Media player (application software) Windows-only trialware Windows media players