Winamp Down for the Count 815
Artifex writes "BetaNews is reporting that the doors at Nullsoft have been closed: 'The last members of the original Winamp team have said goodbye to AOL and the door has all but shut on the Nullsoft era, BetaNews has learned. Only a few employees remain to prop up the once-ubiquitous digital audio player with minor updates, but no further improvements to Winamp are expected.'" The Register also has a story.
I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I guess... (Score:5, Informative)
jlGUI [javazoom.net]
JAMP [mac-systems.de]
JahSing [8m.com]
Re:I guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
OS Winamp (Score:4, Interesting)
Open Source Winamp 3 = Wasabi (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, the Nullsoft-guys already brought us the open Gnutella protocol.
All of this would indicate that the good people at Nullsoft are pretty cool with open source. So if the Winamp 5 source code is not going to be released, then I think we should blame AOL for that, not Nullsoft.
Re:Open Source Winamp 3 = Wasabi (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, the Nullsoft-guys already brought us the open Gnutella protocol.
Might want to check yourself on this, Nullsoft brought us the Gnutella protocol but they did not make it open. Other talented individuals reverse-engineered the Gnutella protocol. Nullsoft never released any source-code or specs.
All of this would indicate that the good people at Nullsoft are pretty cool with open source
Might want to check the license on wasabi http://www.wasabidev.org/license.php [wasabidev.org] you can't even distribute the closed source wasabi.dll with what you write using that sdk, ie it is useless and windows only. It is most certainly NOT open source./p
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OS Winamp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Never. (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, they did open source AOLserver [aolserver.com], so they're actually somewhat friendly to the idea (surprisingly).
It's successor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing what AOL did to their Netscape division, it'll probably be Windows Media Player.
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, did we ever see evidence that AOL had any intention of using Netscape or Winamp for anything, or was it just to kill the projects?
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Interesting)
AOL seemed to have a clue, but didn't really know how to act on it. Time Warner simply sees no value in a product when there is a working Microsoft version of the same thing.
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that if they have to make 1000 employees miserable by laying them off for a quarter (or eight) so the financials look rosy for Wall Street, they'll do it.
And if they have to gobble up a superior technology as a bargaining chip, they'll do it.
Corporate America is the ultimate communal reptilian brain: cold, efficient, ruthless, amoral, it WILL achieve it's goals, no matter who it has to hurt. Things are very black and white in Corporate America: profit/good loss/bad.
Open Source, on the other hand, is very mamillian: there are others "like it", there's a *community*. Altruism actually has a place in this scheme.
And it drives the lizards crazy. If one lizard attacks another lizard, no other lizard intervenes. If a lizard attacks a mamal, all of the mamal's kin come down on that lizard like, well, a pack of wild animals.
Hence...the antipithy between Corporate America and Open Source.
This is a metaphore, to be sure: some businesses "get it". These are the businesses that can plan further than a quarter ahead at a time, or are big enough that they can say "screw the Street" and take a short term hit (IBM?)
Companies are like lizards, they are always prey to bigger lizards.
Open Source is like a herd of (your favorite heard animal here). They can only be taken down by a BIG lizard or another pack based life form.
enough
cheers
6.2
Re:It's successor? (Score:4, Insightful)
a good example is an elephant herd, in which the elders will protect the children from attack and if a parent is killed, the young are still cared for by others. This is not the norm though.
on the other hand, isn't everything you described what a profit maximizing business is about. take something, give it value for long enough to profit, and always reevaluate the prodcut to see if its still worth it to you. It could very well be that those employees are now out of work, but if their work wasn't profitable, there is no valid reason to keep them. Obviously AOL does not feel the work of Nullsoft to be profitable.
Of course, you could not blame AOL for failed companies and blame the greed of the head's of those companies who sold out to AOL rather than keep doing a good thing. You know, even if bill gates walks up to me and offers me a billion dollars for something I have, there is no force on this planet that forces the sale.
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's successor? (Score:5, Interesting)
At one time, Netscape, Nullsoft, Spinner etc. were considered to be 'divlets', all with their own identity, all churning out cool stuff that could be reused etc. You think about what these groups produced:
So what does AOL do? Drive them all into the ground and suck Microsoft's cock. Oh I think some of these things are offhandedly in the AOL client (e.g. radio) but innovation? What's that?
The reason for all this is that AOL has a corporate culture of infighting and conservatism. If two groups compete for some work, it is the one that doesn't rock the boat, that promises the fastest results and with a vision compatible with marketing drones that wins. The AOL client feature requirements and schedule dictates what goes ahead. It doesn't matter that an inferior product will go in or that it will become a millstone in a year or two.
Meanwhile the innovative product withers on the vine and the group responsible is shitcanned. Why? I don't know but I reckon IE & WMP are like comfort blankets to AOL marketing. If you start going all scary on them by showing them something without 'Microsoft' in the title, they get nervous. I bet even the Mac group in AOL feels like an unwanted child.
Consider what could have been. Winamp 5.0 has streaming music, videos, a library, a CD burner, ripping, an integrated browser. With a little push it could have been iTMS. Time Warner has tens of thousands of tracks and movies to sell and AOL is (or was) the perfect outlet to sell them. The much vaunted 'synergy' they kept talking about was right under their noses. But apparantly that's not much use to a massive multi media conglomerate. Oh no, "let's sack them all".
Or consider Gecko. It was cross-platform, standards compliant and modular. AOL could free themselves from Microsoft forever. They could develop a cross-platform and modern client. They wouldn't have to wait for MS to fix bugs, or workaround some broken implementation - they could do whatever they liked with it. So what does AOL do? It stumps for the bitrotten piece of crap from their mortal enemy. And I'm sure Microsoft is ecstatic about that, since it basically ties AOL's hands.
It really does boil down to incompetance. Sheer bloody incompetance.
Re:It's successor? (Score:3, Insightful)
It wasn't 5 or 6 years. It was approximately 3 years to write a modern standards compliant brower from scratch to the point that AOL could have taken it up. Netscape 6 wasn't much to write home about, but even that was emb
Re:It's successor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence. I see no evidence AOL ever made any product that was truly good. Their corporate culture seems to discourage excellence. It's why nobody likes them, and why anything they try to "assimilate" ends up dead within a few years.
foobar (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Foobar - foo_looks (Score:3, Insightful)
You're thinking of foo_looks 2.0. I've been using this plugin for a couple of months, it's rock-solid and has some great looking skins out. You can read up on it at the foo_looks 2.0 Guide [btinternet.com].
Re:It's successor? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's successor? (Score:3, Informative)
Like itunes, but open source and really really slim on resource usage. Really, I've never been so excited with a player since I've found wxMusik. It has a media library, dinamic queries,it's interface is slim, just give it a try!
Time to open it up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think, in a year or so it could be the next iTunes killer..
Re:Time to open it up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. Nullsoft/AOL would have had to have a music store from the getgo in order to compete with the vast library that iTMS has amassed. iTunes is now synonomous with cheap music with a decent interface.
Nullsoft/AOL would just not be able to compete at this late stage in the game. Others have tried but it seems that Apple is continuing to win that battle.
Is this good? Maybe not. We certainly don't want a single viable option for music playing/purchasing but I really don't think that an open source project from Nullsoft/AOL will be able to compete *now*.
Re:Time to open it up! (Score:4, Informative)
Some places are cheaper still [suprnova.org]
Re:Time to open it up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, iTunes is one if the good guys, we don't wanna kill that!
Re:Time to open it up! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Time to open it up! (Score:5, Funny)
No worries here... (Score:2)
Expected Outcome. (Score:5, Interesting)
Read more here: http://p2pnet.net/story/2965
Winamp 5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully the programmers will leave and start some free Winamp like project in the Firefox vein..
Open Amp, here we come
-- Jim.
Prime Versions (Score:3, Funny)
pours some beer on the ground.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:pours some beer on the ground.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't remember what song I wanted to hear by the time that iTunes finally loads.
tis a sad day (Score:2, Insightful)
Owned by AOL? (Score:2)
Now all we will get is bloatware (Score:2, Interesting)
Any major security issues?? (Score:2)
I currently use it as my main player on my work machine.
Any reasons I should be planning on ditching it?
So Why? (Score:2)
Re:So Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Might as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
But after it went to version2, things became less rosy. Version 1.x worked a charm on my old 266/512mb peecee, but the 2.x series was dog slow and ridden with feature creep. I wonder if all the dumbass features in 2.x was something AOL mandated in the app. Rest of story: I went Linux, the Mac and never looked back.
Kudos to the original Nullsoft team, you did a great job!
Re:Might as well... (Score:5, Informative)
Versions 2 and 5 are the best versions ever released.
Version 2 if you have an old computer or just want pure music playing.
Version 5 if you want the Winamp library and new skin support.
Re:Might as well... (Score:3, Informative)
What's a good alternative for people stuck with... (Score:5, Interesting)
If anyone wanted to listen to my Icecast streams, or the ogg recordings I made, I always pointed them at Winamp, as it worked, and was free. And I couldn't be bothered answering lots of questions about codecs, and stuff.
What's the best thing now?
iTunes (for Windows) (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Apple makes some really good software -- even for Windows.
-Mark
Re:iTunes (for Windows) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's a good alternative for people stuck with (Score:5, Informative)
iTunes - great, I love the library/sorting features. It just works and works well. Uses a lot of memory though and not the most responsive app in the world. Ogg support through an experimental quiktime codec extension (I think).
Foobar2000 seemed very powerful and very customiseable, but I didn't really have the time to invest to get it set up like I wanted. The interface style sheets were very powerful, but it lacked volume control at the time - which was just a pain. Seemed to support every codec I've ever heard of (and lots I haven't).
everything else seemed to be a wmp/realplayer/jukebox ripoff.
Re:What's a good alternative for people stuck with (Score:4, Informative)
I recently did an Ask Slashdot on this same question. [slashdot.org]
Had really good luck with jOrbis from www.jcraft.com. I just added the applet to my Shame of the 80's [crackrabbit.com] site. It seems to work everywhere, unlike most java applets... could be that it does exactly one thing: plays ogg streams. :-)
Re:What's a good alternative for people stuck with (Score:5, Informative)
Don't really need more updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Source Replacements? (Score:2)
Re:Open Source Replacements? (Score:2)
Oh no! (Score:2)
Can anybody recommend a good alternative? I am a Windows user (I can't get my nVidia chipset ethernet to work under Linux). The replacement should be capable, and free (no "register for only $39 for bonus features").
And before anybody mentions it, Real Player and Windows Media Plaer are NOT viable alternatives for me (but I think that Real's "Annabelle the sheep" is hilarious -- sheep are funny, just watch "A Close Shave").
I don't suppos
Re:Oh no! (Score:2)
Zinf is what was called FREEAMP.
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)
Tried it once, never looked back. And I was a huge Winamp fan.
http://www.foobar2000.org/
Re:Oh no! (Score:3, Informative)
+free
+excellent for LARGE (40GB+) music collections. their playlist and library features blow everybody else away. this is the "killer feature" for me. absolutely.
+iTunes music store if you're into that (I'm not)
+iPod support (I liked it even before I got an iPod)
+easy to add artwork to albums
+nice support for tagging multiple file
Why the programmers left. (Score:5, Funny)
It was because the Llama really whipped Winamp's ass a couple of weeks ago.
I'm sure it surprised everyone when it happened.
What am I going to tell people now? (Score:2, Insightful)
"What's this ogg thing?" "Open it in Winamp! You have the full version, right?" "Uh, what are these s3m/mod/it files?" "Just open them in Winamp."
Okay, so Winamp will still exist as a reanimated corpse, but the question remains - what am I going to tell people to use now to open these obscure geek music formats? It's not like iTunes would particularly help here, and Microsoft definitely won't care either...
Re:What am I going to tell people now? (Score:3, Insightful)
terrible (Score:2)
Although, on the bright side, winamp has reached near perfection. Either 2.9x for the minimal side of things, or 5.x for the complete package. The sad thing is, every time we'd think that winamp had reached the status of the perfect audio player, Nullsoft would release an update and make perfectio
Buying it from AOL (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking for a good WinAmp replacement? (Score:5, Informative)
I have loaded up the playlist with 15,000 songs, and it only used 2MB of RAM!!!
There are extensive plugin's available, it is compatable with shoutcast.
FooBar takes a very minimalistic approach to it's UI. You can add bell's & whistle's & visualizations if you want.
Re:Looking for a good WinAmp replacement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looking for a good WinAmp replacement? (Score:5, Funny)
Your forgot the apostrophe in "visualization's". :)
Goodbye old pal. (Score:4, Interesting)
But Winamp was the first free gui audio player that I ever really enjoyed. I remember sending playlists to friends as a way to encourage them to download it. Thanks for helping to make computers cool, Nullsoft. You were great.
Winamp Unlimited, for Teh Win (Score:5, Informative)
The BetaNews article is a bit off, as is the story it spawned over at The Register (whose headline for the piece was just ridiculous.).
As usual, Winamp Unlimited [winampunlimited.com] sets it straight with not only details on an upcoming 5.06 version of Winamp, but details on what the former Nullsoft-ees are doing now and a naked picture of their ex-Product Manager.
"Winamp Unlimited [winampunlimited.com] is your #1 source for Winamp news, rumors,forum highlights, and general propoganda. Awesome!"
.
XMMS (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is this a big deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this a big deal? Don't get me wrong, I've been a WinAmp user for years, and I love the program for playing my MP3s. But just because it's not going to get any more updates, why is that a big deal?
I mean, we're talking about a program designed for little more than playing audio (and later video) files. Once that is accomplished, and once the bugs have been relatively shaken out, anything else is just the beginnings of bloatware.
WinAmp has seemed to be relatively bug free to me, and works for what it was designed (audio/video) files. Why do we *NEED* more updates (other than if more bugs are found, of course)?
Steve Gedikian's farewell post... (Score:5, Informative)
To all of my friends and loyal users of Winamp,
I regret to inform you all that I have quit Nullsoft. To many of you, this news may come as quite a surprise, while those who know me best, it's no surprise at all.
It's hard to describe the experiences of the last year. Nearly a year ago, we released Winamp 5.0 and finally reclaimed our user's hearts. It was a very proud moment for our entire team.
Since then, for varying circumstances, much of the team has left the company. It's been tremendously difficult to recover from the losses of such core team members and close friends.
Those of us left behind have tried our best to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. Unfortunately, given our current environment, continuing to move forward has become tremendously difficult and frustrating, to say the least.
That said; I was recently presented a wonderful opportunity to work at Apple with the iTunes team. I hope to bring much of my experience from Nullsoft to Apple with the hopes of making a tremendous difference there.
The fact is; there's never a good time to leave something that you love so much. Given the state of things today it was appropriate for me start planning a life after Nullsoft.
I want to thank you for how much you've all contributed to making Winamp such a huge success. I'd like to appreciate the efforts of all the volunteers who've poured their heart and soul into this place, all the skinners and developers who helped the rest of us customize Winamp to our hearts content, and all my friends at Nullsoft who made working here more than a job, but a family.
I ask that all of you who work so hard, please, keep working hard. There are still a few of us left at Nullsoft and they're doing their best to keep this ship afloat. You're the only thing that can help them do it.
For those of you who would like to keep in touch with me, feel free to reach me at 'steve at gedikian dot com'. You can also keep tabs on what I'm up to by going to my homepage at http://www.gedikian.com.
I love you all and I can't thank you enough for making this chapter of my life so wonderful.
Peace.
-s
I would say the emotional overtone of his post is well understandable, Winamp certainly did build itself up an immense fanbase with it's great (and free) software, it's climb to the top of the proverbial heap of MP3 players showing dedication of the programmers that built and maintained it.
Farewell, last of the true Nullsoft team, and good luck in future ventures!
Textbook Example of "What Not To Do(tm)" (Score:5, Insightful)
Voila! You've just shown the world, in textbook fashion, how to flush $100m down the toilet. Not to mention the fumbling of a precious opportunity.
Re:Textbook Example of "What Not To Do(tm)" (Score:5, Funny)
Exec 1 buys a great little company for a reasonable price considering the boom (later known as a bubble). He gets a lot of credit and a promotion.
Exec 2 takes over and refocuses the division on its strengths - service. Exec 2 keeps costs down by discouraging research and development and promoting 'synergy'. Since AOL owns two of every type of software out there, they underfund half the company in the name of savings. Exec 2 gets a promotion.
Exec 3 takes the new position and wonders why Exec 2 was so highly regarded. Why underfund a product when you can cut funding all together and save even more. Exec 3 takes a CEO job with another fortune 500 company.
Exec 4 takes the job in 2005 and finds a small upstart making a great new music player. They buy the company for $200 million. Exec 4 gets a promotion.
The last guy out... (Score:4, Interesting)
I Haven't Forgotten, And We Will Never Forget. [gedikian.com]
An insider's view of the end of Nullsoft...
-ch
A Winamp Tale (Score:5, Insightful)
From: Nullsoft [mailto:sales@winamp.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 1999 3:59 PM
To: M Smith
Subject: Winamp Registration Code
*** Thank you for registering Winamp ***
(etc, etc)
Since Winamp is uncrippled nag-free shareware, this key doesn't do anything in Winamp. You can, however, for fun, enter the key into the 'shareware' tab of Winamp's about box.
(etc etc) Now here's the important part:
This registration is valid for ALL versions of Winamp, past, present and future.
(etc, etc)
---
Justin Frankel
Nullsoft, Inc.
---
...and it did kick the Llama's ass. I've got bad eyes and it let me make the control panel DOUBLE SIZE, which was a godsend.
I went through, hrm, 8 or 10 OS upgrades. I almost never downloaded a new version. It did only a few things and it did it well.
My happy world came to an end when I moved to Windows XP and Winamp stopped working. So I got the latest version and found that after 5 years my registration code didn't work anymore. So I wrote NullSoft:
From: M Smith
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 3:24 PM
To: 'support@winamp.com'
Subject: Ode to a support person
In a desperate attempt to contact someone at NullSoft, I send this letter to you.
Dear Human Being, presumably one employed by NullSoft:
Back in 1997 I paid 10 hard earned dollars for Winamp. I just downloaded the 5 Pro version and discovered that my registration key doesn't work! Could this please be remedied? Here's the text of the email you sent me ages ago: (etc, etc)
To which I got back this message:
From: support@winamp.com
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 12:46 AM
To: M Smith
Subject: Re: Ode to a support person
Dear M Smith,
Thank you for writing WinAmp, My name is Larry, I will be assisting you today.
You can find your Registration Key in your confirmation e-mail. If you do not have your confirmation e-mail, you can also retrieve your Registration Key by viewing the details of your purchase using the lookup at the address listed below: (etc, etc)
Hrm. Larry appears to not have read my email, for, Lo! I did have a conformation email, in fact, I sent him a copy of it.
NOW, I remembered the whole "AOL buys NullSoft" thing and it occurs to me that I'm in the hands of an organization with infinite cruelty and infinite patience. I tried to break through again:
From: M Smith
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 7:28 AM
To: 'support@winamp.com'
Subject: FW: Ode to a support person
Larry,
You obviously are not a human being, because a real human being would notice:
1) I DO have my confirmation email - it was pasted at the end of my email.
2) My registration key (NNNNNNNN) is obviously not the format that Winamp uses today.
3) Since I paid for the product BEFORE Nullsoft ever used Digitalriver for order fulfillment, looking up my order would be fruitless.
Either the human Larry was incensed at my sarcasm or the Perl Script Larry couldn't handle the language for I haven't heard back from NullSoft/AOL/Time/Warner yet.
So I bumble along with the latest freebie version of Winamp feeling generally dispossessed - I have a lifetime agreement with NullSoft and the parent company won't take my phone calls, so to speak. I tried sending email to Justin Frankel and it bounced - now I know why.
Anyone know know a lawyer who will take on a class-action lawsuit for 1/3rd of $10?
Free the llama! (Score:5, Interesting)
I Owe My Job To Winamp (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in 1997 I wrote an mp3 streaming server that was originally intended as the audio equivalent of a webcam I could chat and play music.... obviously this quickly turned into the webs first live mp3 radio station. Problem was that there were no mp3 players that could stream content, I had to give my friends a perl script wrapped around mpg123. (as it happened this script also turned the client into a relay server, creating the earliest p2p streaming distribution system).
So it laboured in obscurity for a while until Winamp added HTTP streaming support and suddenly I could tell all those windows users to download winamp and point it at port 3223 on the server cluster. The code was released under the GPL, and I had a few downloads, but it required some real hackish thinking to get it to work for most people. That's when I started getting job offers in California (I was working as an astronomer in Northern Ireland).
Of course then Shoutcast got released and it pretty much did what mp3serv did, mp3serv promptly became even less interesting. But that didn't matter, because mp3serv was so obscure that nobody ever found it, it was only once there was a proprietory solution that people started to look for an open source solution. Icecast came along, it was much cleaner and smarter than mp3serv, so I took all the good bits from mp3serv and integrated them into Icecast and LiveIce.
That was 1999, by that point I was ready to quit my PhD and take a real job......
Re:Shoutcast (Score:2)
You can still stream. There are plenty of tools available. Shoutcast (is|was) a really handy directory! But, Nullsoft own(s|ed) both Winamp AND Shoutcast. Hopefully someone else will come up with a service aping theirs!
Re:Well... What else is out there? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there is XMMS [xmms.org]... Zinf [zinf.org]... to name a couple... Zinf has a windows version...
Re:sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
Ridiculous. Or, in
Re:sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Woah! (Score:5, Interesting)
- Google Winamp
- Google OpenOffice
- Google Firefox/Phoenix (complete with gmail integration)
- Google Linux (BSD?)
Now that they've sold their souls to the devil (i.e. - gone public), they've certainly got the resources to put it together with the much needed polish that the mainstream is looking for.
Re:Woah! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait......
Cui bono? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open sourcing it would be much better.
Re:Cui bono? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cui bono? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cui bono? (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore, Linux with Gnome, KDE, or one of the other Windows-like interfaces is the same as Windows. And the Mac interface is like CDE, so Mac and Solaris are the same. Yeah, I see it now...
Or maybe it's just that Word and all of it's work-alikes are the same? OpenOffice/StarOffice, Corel's products, even KDE Write, or maybe even Windows Write (almost the same, right)?
Yes, there is an alternative in XMMS (heck, I prefer it), and even in Windows Medi
*blink* (Score:3, Funny)
Ow! The irony is making my stomach hurt!
Re:Cui bono? (Score:5, Funny)
You have searched for "U2 leaked CD vertigo.mp3
Would you like to purchase it for your gplayer?
Or more worryingly
You have searched for "Paris Hilton sex video"
Would you like a new packet of gTissues sent to your home?
Re:Cui bono? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cui bono? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, why the hell do you think Winamp added video capability? They were gearing it up as a WiMP competitor, and got cold feet. Same thing for Netscape...they developed it, then got cold feet and signed a contract to continue including IE with AOL.
I su
Re:Woah! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Woah! (Score:3, Insightful)
I and everyone else I've heard from thought Winamp 3 was much worse than Winamp 2. I tried 3 and quickly went back to 2.
Winamp 5 fixed most of the problems with Winamp 3. The stuff you have to pay for in Winamp 5 is strictly optional and for convenience, you could always use Lame and EAC to do at least as good a job with a little more work.
Correction (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes is nice, and since getting an ipod, it's more or less a requirement, but it still lacks features that Winamp 5 brings to the table.
You mention that Winamp5 is unstable and slow, and that may be on your hardware, but on mine it flies (On both a 3Ghz P4, and a AMD1600 system), and it resolved all instability that Winamp3 brought to the table. In contrast, itunes is a f'in power hungry beast! On Windows it slows the whole system down at times, something Winamp5 has never done, and even on my dual 2ghz. Mac, it can freeze the whole system at times. Not too cool... If Winamp5 were out for the Mac, and gave me ipod features simuilar to itunes, itunes would never be used again on my systems.
You also bitch (sorry... When you call things a "steaming turd", you're bitching, rather than making a point) about how Winamp 5 was moving away from being free, but only the pro version was. The regular version has more than enough capabilities for 99% of the users out there, and for those who wanted more, they could pay a small fee to upgrade it to the pro version. Not a bad deal IMHO, and it's a helluva lot better than a time-limited trial.
Not to mention the streaming media capabilities that Winamp5 offers: The
As for your comments about people reverting to winamp3... I haven't met anyone who feels that way. In fact the opposite's true, from what I've seen. I know several people who had wrote Winamp off after v3, but came back loving it after v5 hit the streets.
Finally, I have to point out that their library is the best I've seen. It automatically updated and removed dead tracks as they were shuffled around, which is something itunes still doesn't pull off that well, and the way it imports both video and audio files has allowed me to do some very granular sorting by putting the files into named folders.
As an example, I can search for, and find items with such wide-ranging search terms as "Rated-G animation", "Industrial music", "Sheep on Drugs", "The Simpsons", "Rock Music", "Rated-R movies", and "Kids Television", and get very specific, meaningful results. This allows anyone in my house to quickly pull up media without having to know how I've sorted my collection. itunes doesn't even come close to this level of organization.
Summary: I hope this isn't the end of Winamp. They lost me w/Winamp3, but really made up for it with v5. I hope someone either buys the source, or it's open-sourced. This would be a very sad ending for such a great piece of software!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Woah! (Score:3, Informative)
XMMS under Linux is what WinAmp should have been...light footprint, does what it needs to, and nothing it does not.
Under MacOS, SoundApp is my choice for the same reasons. Light, does what it should and nothing else.
Re:Context menu for iTunes? (Score:5, Informative)
I've found that the best way to make iTunes organize your music the way you want is to trust iTunes. It took a giant leap of faith for me (having always been a launch-winamp-from-windows-explorer kind of guy). But if you let iTunes handle the music organization, you'll find that it gives you the flexibility to do more than any other method out there.
I've now stopped organizing my music by hand (creating a folder for each artists, and album, and blah blah blah) and just let iTunes keep everything organized. It works much better since it synchronizes folder and file names with changes you make in the ID3 tags (and whatever the tags for AAC files are called). I also (usually) no longer browse my music collection from Windows Explorer, but just browse with iTunes. Even without playlists you'll find it's just as efficient (if not more so) than browsing files directly.