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There’s a petition for AOL make the software open-source, allowing development to continue. There’s a rumor of a sale to Microsoft, though it’s possible Microsoft is more interested in Winamp’s Shoutcast radio platform than the iconic MP3 software. All of these services also exist on smartphones and tablets, which themselves are overtaking laptops and desktops for leisurely things like listening to music.ĪOL’s decision to kill Winamp might not be as terminal as it sounds. You can put your entire collection on Google Play Music and listen through any web browser. Today you can stream any song you want through Spotify, or take your pick of online radio services such as Pandora and Songza. Winamp added some of these features over time, including a music store and an iPod sync tool, but it was never as seamless as iTunes was.īesides, desktop MP3 software is not as valuable anymore.
WINAMP VS WINAMP PRO PORTABLE
Nothing beats a fully-integrated solution that plays music, sells music and synchronizes that music to the most popular portable MP3 player in the world. As soon as iTunes landed on Windows, with an iPod invasion in tow, it was hard to convince people that Winamp was something they needed. Still, there was a dark period where Winamp wasn’t this good, which is why I’d stopped installing it on every new computer I get.Įven if AOL hadn’t trashed Winamp over time, it’d probably still be in rough shape. On the surface it’s lightweight and simple–certainly more so than the monstrosity that is iTunes for Windows–but you can customize it in meaningful ways. Nostalgia value aside, Winamp in its current form actually strikes me as a good piece of software. (Fun fact: Ryan Geiss, creator of the popular Geiss and Milkdrop visualizations, apparently works on Google Glass now.) The visualization section of Winamp’s website reads like a time capsule the most recent user comment on Tripex was logged 1,375 days ago.
WINAMP VS WINAMP PRO INSTALL
The concept lives on in other music players–you can even install WhiteCap, a personal favorite, in iTunes–but it’s not the same anymore. I spent more time staring at these things than I care to admit. Even the fact that you can’t toggle the media library without digging into the menu bar suggests that it’s an afterthought. It’s an obvious addition, but to me it was also a distraction from Winamp’s focus on the play queue. The music library, by the way, was a later addition to Winamp, a conceit to the way iTunes moved song selection out of our file browsers and directly into the software. It only took a minute to get my music library scanned and listed.
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The default installation settings are useful and minimally invasive, and the software started up quickly. This is Winamp late into its retirement, no longer so hell-bent on making money through bloatware. To my surprise, installing Winamp 5.66 was painless. I recall taking great pains to prevent Winamp from installing extra toolbars and trialware onto my computer. It’s been years since I used Winamp, and my last impression was that AOL had turned the program into a bloated mess. I was expecting much worse from the installation.