
Vivendi Buys Majority Stake In Winamp, Shoutcast Owner Radionomy - prostoalex
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/vivendi-buys-majority-stake-in-winamp-shoutcast-owner-radionomy-1201664170/
======
eli
A few years back Ars did a nice longform piece on what happened to Winamp
after the AOL acquisition. I think HN would like it:

"Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself"

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-
greatest-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-
mp3-player-undid-itself/)

~~~
TheGRS
I think one of the big takeaways from that article is that Winamp could have
been Spotify, but AOL unintentionally/intentionally sand bagged it.

~~~
mikeryan
My first thought on this purchase is it's to jumpstart a studio owned Spotify
replacement.

~~~
prostoalex
Spotify is ~20% label-owned, as is probably any startup in music space that's
cash-light.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Winamp is still installed on all of my Windows boxes. I've never, ever been
the kind of person to use shuffle. I prefer to just listen to an album at a
time. And so my default method of playing music is still right-clicking on the
album's folder in Explorer and clicking "Play in Winamp".

It still whips the llama's ass.

~~~
thristian
My default method is "shuffle by album"; it boggles my mind that so few music
players support it.

Back when I used iTunes, I used "party shuffle" mode configured to enqueue an
album at a time, which worked pretty well. Now that I use Linux, Quod Libet
has a plugin that makes it automatically switch to a randomly-selected album
when the current one is finished playing, which is close enough. Most of the
other music players I've looked at just don't understand the concept at all.

~~~
mikeryan
The whole concept of an "album" is dying...

------
jacquesm
Did they go through some kind of time-warp to decide on what new hot
properties they were going to invest in?

WinAmp definitely has name recognition but that name recognition is solidly
associated with AOL, MS windows and the dark gray past.

~~~
dools
I regularly use winamp to tune into internet radio stations from my android

------
yuvadam
It really whips the llama's ass. <3

~~~
horsecaptin
Here's hoping that it whips it again!

------
themartorana
Winamp is one of the few pieces of software I miss from my Windows days. Every
time I open iTunes or any audio player (from VLC to Spotify) I fondly remember
Winamp.

~~~
kileywm
If you're looking for a new audio player on Windows, you may want to try out
foobar2000. I've been using it for several years and have really enjoyed it.

[https://www.foobar2000.org/](https://www.foobar2000.org/)

~~~
stan_rogers
The foobar2000 library is a great example of why I and others still use
Winamp. I haven't seen a single "modern" player whose library layout is
anywhere near as useful as Winamp's.

~~~
detaro
I didn't use Winamps library feature much, at least I can't remember anything
notable about it. What's special about it?

~~~
J_Darnley
I like it because it has clear separation from the Playlist. Something that
most other players seem to lack. You start playing one song they go on playing
everything else in your library. Other than that it had a nicely customizable
display and as a sibling commenter said it had built-in tag editing.

------
pla3rhat3r
Used to use Shoutcast for an internet radio thing I did. While it wasn't the
most intuitive thing to set up, once it was working it never broke.
Interesting to see that someone has found value in both WinAmp and Shoutcast
when there are so many other solution that make it much easier to listen
and/or broadcast music.

~~~
jacquesm
I still use it. Mpd has a shoutcast server built in and I use that to stream
audio to various computers from my homebrew mp3 collection administration.
Very useful.

------
djloche
Related aside: the original author of winamp still writes regularly at
1014.org; I use his licecap* software on a daily basis for making gifs

* [https://github.com/lepht/licecap](https://github.com/lepht/licecap)

------
ArekDymalski
Sighm I wish they would reanimate AVS (Advanced Visualization Studio) ...

------
guelo
MP3 players are obsolete ever since Spotify convinced everyone that managing a
personal music library is too much of a pain. Maybe this is about Shoutcast.

~~~
cookiecaper
I continue to maintain a local MP3 collection and use a local MP3 player. The
main reason I haven't tried out more streaming services is that most of them
require Adobe Flash which doesn't work well on Linux. The secondary reason is
that streaming libraries often lack specific content I want.

~~~
omginternets
The tertiary reason is that I have no internet in the subway.

~~~
endgame
The quaternary reason is that I still have the music I bought, even if the
company provides the streaming services goes belly-up, decides it won't
support my country any more or even just has a bad day or an outage.

------
smegel
I still use WinAmp on Windows, although I have switched to using Sony Media Go
to sync music to my Z1 compact. And while I used to use Winamp on my phone,
Sony's Walkman music app blows away any other android music player I have come
across.

~~~
Laaw
Why not just convert to streaming service? This seems like a lot more work
than the $8 is worth.

~~~
smegel
I have a 1GB/month mobile plan, which is actually medium-large in Australia. I
would burn through that pretty quick if I was streaming mp3s all day. Also we
are a large, sparse country with poor (or zero) mobile reception outside
cities and large towns (at all, let along 3g/4g), and I do a lot of country
driving. I rarely listen to music in front of a computer, where streaming
would make a lot more sense for me.

~~~
Laaw
It's not _actually_ streaming, if you don't use it like that. You can download
thousands of songs directly to your device over WiFi.

~~~
smegel
Well I suppose if I listened to new music I would consider it then, but the
majority of albums I listen to were released in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and
I already have them.

~~~
Laaw
I'm guessing this isn't actually a technical decision for you, is it?

~~~
smegel
Probably a force of habit plus the fact I am not constantly listening to newly
released music.

------
mratzloff
Ah, so they finally found a buyer for Winamp. They've been shopping that
around for a buyer for quite awhile. I remember hearing back channel about it
nearly a year ago.

------
MicroBerto
Open source that bad boy!

------
Animats
WinAmp? The MP3 player? What next, RealPlayer?

~~~
ionforce
Wasn't RealPlayer the fore-front of streaming technology at some point? And
then they never innovated and just stayed there...?

Their installer had so much extra shit in it...

~~~
recursive
They were at the forefront hiding their uninstallers.

------
camillomiller
Wait, Winamp's still alive?

------
Justin_K
Winamp is still around? Figures these idiots would buy obsolete software that
they hated so much about 15 years ago.

------
tomc1985
Not good...

