
Unofficial Winamp Web Site - Gwxz
http://www.mywinamp.com
======
jpswade
On January 14, 2014, it was officially announced that Belgian online radio
aggregator Radionomy had bought Winamp and Shoutcast, formerly owned by
Nullsoft.

\- [https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/14/5263086/winamp-
radionomy-...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/14/5263086/winamp-radionomy-
acquisition-internet-radio-service)

So since this site was launched, it looks like you can now download Winamp
from the Official Winamp website:

\- [http://winamp.com/](http://winamp.com/)

For those asking for old versions of Winamp, you can get them here:

\-
[http://www.oldversion.com/windows/winamp/](http://www.oldversion.com/windows/winamp/)

For those asking for alternatives, there are some:

\-
[https://alternativeto.net/software/winamp/](https://alternativeto.net/software/winamp/)

For other Nullsoft magic, including Gnutella and WASTE, see:

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullsoft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullsoft)

Also worth checking out founder Justin Frankel and his new company see:

\- [https://www.cockos.com/](https://www.cockos.com/)

LICEcap is great.

~~~
flopunctro
Heads up, the winamp 2.95 download from www.oldversion.com triggers a malware
alert from Windows Defender. Another red flag is that the download is via
regular HTTP, not HTTPS.

So I'd recommend avoiding oldversion.com.

~~~
jpswade
[https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ef1423999cbefd4f2a3a98ac...](https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ef1423999cbefd4f2a3a98acee2b194a4260268cb4517abda9f12963e866b7e5/detection)

~~~
piffey
Let's not encourage people to take VT as gospel though. Lots of ways to get
around the tools there. Fun malware does it all the time.

------
LisaAR
Thanks for sharing this useful information!

See, Winamp wasn't "just another player" for some of us. It was the first
thing we fired up when we turned on the computer. So, seeing it go down the
drain for the last 10 years or so, really hurt . Bloath, bloath and more
bloath... damn, I would've opted for RealPlayer if it wasn't for the terrible
UI. On the other hand, important features, like plugin playback compatibility
was getting worse (for example, there wasn't a single version of Winamp after
5.24 that played back MP3Pro files correctly with the Fraunhoffer MP3Pro
plugin, until now ).

~~~
mirimir
Indeed.

And removing all traces of Windows Media Player was one of the first steps
after installing Windows.

~~~
rolandog
Ha! I had forgotten the crucial first steps of setting up new computers from
back then.

A more recent habit, until recently (if I had to use Windows), I would also
try to install most apps through Chocolatey to help keeping up to date.

------
ktzar
There's is a website that's keeping versions of Winamp, including the one I
consider the best 2.95 [https://winampheritage.com/download-winamp-
player](https://winampheritage.com/download-winamp-player)

~~~
lazyjeff
Winamp 2 has been my music player for 20 years and it's still my main player
that I use with the flac plugin. I never upgraded to Winamp 3 or 5, and Winamp
2.95 is still fully functional on Windows 10. Selecting "Double Size" makes it
mostly fine on a HiDPI monitor, except some controls are a bit pixelated.

Winamp 2.95 didn't need to connect to the internet, there is no background
service, no application manager bloatware, no ads or music recommendations,
and it loads in 1/10 of a second without any startup service or preloader. It
really whipped the llama's ass.

Straight up win32 software back then just was simpler, and the programmers
back then like Justin Frankel, Ludvig Strigeus, etc. cared about program
efficiency. A single programmer could write several popular applications
within the decade, and now every application needs a giant team. What
happened?

~~~
rlv-dan
My only problem with Winamp 2 is that people laugh at me when they pass my
computer and see it.

~~~
vijucat
Yeah :-) Show them the keyboard shortcuts. Like the zxcvb set for the main 5
controls (prev track, play, pause, stop, next track), or pressing j (for jump)
and then typing a part of the name of the song you remembered to play what you
want at the speed of thought + typing. They'll understand that ~~it's really
fast~~ it really whips the llama's ass!

~~~
Moru
Or you could globally remap them to the Quake-controls and do ctrl+shift+E to
pause, next and previous with W and S, 5 sec forward/backward with A/D and
on/off with Q.

Nothing like fragging your friends while playing loud music but able to skip a
song if it doesn't fit the moment, all without even flipping active window.
Never looked at another player because of this function.

Just had to adapt with ctrl+shift+B for next song since S was hard bound in
some game.

------
mrob
Winamp was my first general-purpose music player. When I switched OS to
GNU/Linux I switched to XMMS (originally called X11Amp), which was a clone of
Winamp. XMMS was later forked to Beep Media Player, and Beep Media Player was
forked to Audacious Media Player, which I still use today.

I use the GTK interface of Audacious Media Player now, because it works better
with higher resolution screens, but the old Winamp-style interface is still
supported, and Audacious Media Player still has all the speed and simplicity
that made me love Winamp when I first tried it.

------
tomtomtom777
Early Winamp was truly revolutionary in terms of UX and quality.

Highly intuitive, beautiful and always "just working", with an elegant plugin
system.

It is no coincidence that the authors went on to create Gnutella, which could
be considered the starting point of decentralized networking.

~~~
gonesilent
Justin has done the same for DAWS see https:/reaper.fm and gone full circle to
making music.

~~~
jacquesm
Linux supported too!

------
tillinghast
From Ars Technica: Winamp’s woes: How the greatest MP3 player undid itself -
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/07/winam...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/07/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/)

Winamp 2 & 3 were my sweet spot. I want to say versions 2.53 through 2.56(?)
are the versions indelibly burned in my memory. Such a breath of fresh air
from the Real garbage of the day. Hope Frankel and Lord are well.

~~~
theandrewbailey
What made you like Winamp3? All I remember about it was that it was a slow hot
mess that didn't load my old playlists, and went back to 2.something after a
month.

------
smcl
If, like me, you only recently decided to start listening to your music
collection on a linux desktop and were dismayed to find that xmms was split
into some odd client/server model, you can still use the original xmms 1.x. I
wrote up how I built it here, since I found it a bit fiddly:
[https://blog.mclemon.io/debian-building-the-original-
xmms](https://blog.mclemon.io/debian-building-the-original-xmms)

~~~
alxlaz
Just a quick note that, unless there's a very specific reason why you want the
original XMMS (nostalgia, or a specific plugin?), it may be more convenient to
go with Audacious. It has a "Winamp" mode that gives you the same interface.
It also supports classic skins, from back when UIs weren't all flat and
boring, so that you can look at your desktop without yawning for more than ten
seconds.

Building heirloom :-) GTK and glib isn't a big deal, but Audacious is packaged
by pretty much all distros.

~~~
smcl
Good point - it's purely a nostalgia thing for me. I will definitely check out
Audacious though!

------
Teever
Does anyone know what happened to the company that bought Winamp? If I recall
correctly they announced that they were going to be releasing modern versions
of Winamp a few years ago but there's been nothing but radio silence.

~~~
KindOne
Version 5.8.3660 was released 15 months ago in October 2018.

------
deanCommie
One could argue we made better ways to play MP3s on our computers.

But nothing has come anywhere close to improving or replacing Milkdrop

~~~
mrweasel
I would argue that WinAmp and XMMS where the last good audio players. Why is
it that modern music players think that the need to do library management, why
are they fullscreen applications?

We need to start maintaining winamp and the clones again.

~~~
sandoooo
For pure mp3 playing, foobar2000 is like winamp except still getting updated,
with less ugly (more OS-conforming) UI. For even more simplicity, there's no
reason you should need a separate app for mp3s and movies, and mpc-hc is the
best no-nonsense media player.

~~~
pferde
I think there _is_ a reason to keep audio and video playback separate, because
you approach them differently.

When you are watching video, it's usually where your attention goes, whereas
listening to audio is something done "in the background", while your attention
is elsewhere (reading, writing, playing a game, or even cleaning the house).

Therefore to me it is obvious that an audio playing application should behave
like a good butler - readily available when you need to e.g. change the
playlist, but invisible otherwise - and I would compare a video playing
application to a live entertainer.

A video playing application should of course also get out of your way so you
can focus on the actual video, but there is a subtle difference nevertheless.

------
zelly
Remembering all the time I wasted collecting and curating a personal MP3
library (now replaced completely by Spotify), I wonder what current practices
I spend a lot of time on that will be become obsolete.

~~~
0xffff2
I still have my old MP3s despite only really using Spotify these days. I don't
regret the time spent building and curating that collection in the slightest.
If anything, I expect Spotify itself to be the thing that becomes obsolete,
leaving me to regret that last several years in which I haven't kept up with
adding new music to the collection that I actually own.

~~~
zelly
> If anything, I expect Spotify itself to be the thing that becomes obsolete

Almost certainly but there will be an alternative company with some migration
path for your playlists. Unless omnipresent network connectivity stops being a
thing, in which case there would be bigger problems than music.

~~~
0xffff2
It's already a problem on Spotify that my playlists rot over time with
seemingly random songs being no longer available. Playlists are much less
important than the music itself.

------
mxmilkb
Is there anything for Linux that has similar functionality to the Jump To File
mechanism for finding and enqueuing songs to play next within in a playlist
without altering the playlist itself? It was so good that it was integrated
into (IIRC) Winamp 3.

[https://winampplugins.co.uk/jtfe.html](https://winampplugins.co.uk/jtfe.html)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/winamp/comments/9rw9fb/winamp_58_se...](https://old.reddit.com/r/winamp/comments/9rw9fb/winamp_58_search_in_playlist_vs_jump_to_file)

(Bonus points of anyone knows of an MPD client that can make it appear like
MPD has this feature? ;)

~~~
severine
> _Is there anything for Linux that has similar functionality to the Jump To
> File mechanism for finding and enqueuing songs to play next within in a
> playlist without altering the playlist itself?_

In Clementine, that's Ctrl+D.

[https://www.clementine-player.org/](https://www.clementine-player.org/)

~~~
mxmilkb
Yes! That's the right queue-within-a-playlist feature with numbers next to the
playlist entries that I'm looking for. Even has a queue dialog window.

And there's an Android app that works as a remote, and it can http stream,
nice.

Thanks! So long (for now) mpd..

------
nathell
Ooh, DOSAMP! I used to use it to play MP3s in high school, when I was still a
heavy DOS user and upgraded to a Pentium-133. Then, on Windows, I was firmly
in the Winamp 2 camp.

------
nuclearsugar
On a related note, we are just about to launch a VJ tool using Milkdrop.

NestDrop allows you to perform with high-resolution high-fps visuals which
react in realtime to the music and then broadcasts the video via Spout. Since
the Milkdrop engine is at the core you can easily bring in your own presets.
Use any audio source to drive the visuals, even live audio.
[http://www.nestimmersion.ca/nestdrop.html](http://www.nestimmersion.ca/nestdrop.html)

~~~
yoz
This looks cool, but there's absolutely nothing on the page about OS and
hardware requirements. I can't even tell if it's for Windows, Mac or both.

~~~
nuclearsugar
Whoops. Thanks for the heads up! We just started laying out the webpage to
prepare for the release.

Windows is the only supported OS currently.

Basically any range of GPU is supported, according to the resolution you want
to run the visuals at. But if you have a decent GPU then you can run up to 4
different video streams concurrently.

------
Ndymium
I remember there being a website (forgot the name/URL) where people could
share their visualizations for Winamp. I downloaded so many presets from there
and even recorded some to VHS because I thought they were so cool.

I made my own, too, mostly by taking something made by someone else and
changing the code/numbers to see how it would react. I wish I could find those
files again somewhere and just spend a moment immersing myself into that
universe.

~~~
grandchild
Depends if you are thinking about AVS or Milkdrop.

Me, being an AVS guy, can only recommend
[https://visbot.net](https://visbot.net) .

In the olden days there were: \-
[https://customized.org](https://customized.org) and \-
[https://deviantart.com/](https://deviantart.com/)

DA is sadly almost unusable for finding AVS presets now (as I discovered
today), so you may start with this page:

\-
[https://www.deviantart.com/tobsiv/favourites/41261647/featur...](https://www.deviantart.com/tobsiv/favourites/41261647/featured)

for finding some of the more famous packs.

~~~
Ndymium
AVS was what I had, I never used Milkdrop for some reason.

------
yboris
I loved how easy it was to create skins for Winamp ... here's the skin I
created and have been using since 2012:

[https://www.deviantart.com/yboris/art/Lear-lite-YBoris-
remix...](https://www.deviantart.com/yboris/art/Lear-lite-YBoris-remix-winamp-
skin-286587311)

~~~
searine
Making skins for Winamp was how I taught myself photoshop.

~~~
bredren
Me too. I made a pretty sweet custom Dave Matthews skin. I wonder if it is in
the bundle here.

------
benboughton1
Winamp is great, ah the memories. But just like my gripe with video media, is
there anywhere to buy plain mp3s for all artists, store them on my hdd and
manage them in winamp? Is that still an option in 2020 without a subscription
to something?

~~~
MrGilbert
Of course. 7digital comes to mind, HDTracks - and, of course, Amazon. The
files are all yours to keep.

In fact, I find it easier to get non-drm music files than movies.

~~~
manuelfcreis
I would also bandcamp to this list!

------
alamortsubite
This is great.

In or around 2010, when I finally shed the last shackles of MS, I switched
from Winamp to Audacious (w/Winamp Classic interface plugin).

20 uninterrupted years of Bento Classified and whipping the llama's ass!

It's also pretty easy to replace all the standard Audacious icons with
Winamp's (at least on Xubuntu). No disrespect intended to Audacious, simply
for full effect.

Thanks to everyone behind Winamp and Audacious for building great software!

(Now to start up "The Matrix" on the media monitor and head on over to
Slashdot.)

------
bitwize
20 years on, and still kicking the llama's ass.

~~~
Japhy_Ryder
Memories....

------
ryanmercer
I just wish my car would play "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass" when I
start it.

------
holoduke
Winamp for me is linked to the time internet was still internet without the
giant corporations ruling and ruining the entire single single part with
heavily overengineered saas solutions. It was the time of altavista, icq,
popup explosions and 1mb download for a program. It was still unexplored
cowboy/free for all land, ran by tech dudes. Now its dominated by the absolute
evil of capitalism. Not tech, but marketing. bleh

~~~
rchaud
A crude analogy:

\- early Internet - Homebrew Computer Club with a shared ethos of free
software and free information for all

\- 2000s Internet and later - Bill Gates joins the HCC, refuses to share code,
and before long the only incentive to create stuff is to sell it by the
truckload, by any means necessary.

------
29athrowaway
Nullsoft also created WASTE, although it was quickly shut down by AOL.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE)

I wonder if someone is using that thing.

------
mirimir
Yeah, I remember when Winamp went to hell. I ended up using AIMP, which was
fitting because I was "buying" music from some Eastern European "store" that
operated under Russian copyright law.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
AllOfMP3?

~~~
mirimir
It was either that or MP3Sparks.com, I think. But it wasn't long before I
discovered torrents.

------
cmicali
I've got a working macOS Winamp-inspired music player I've been working on. I
was thinking of open-sourcing - anyone here interested in something like this?

------
anewguy9000
just came to say ive been a winamp faithful since 2.x and only this year
finally found a worthy successor: audacious. open source, crossplatform, and
bit perfect

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
We're all having a collective nostalgia trip here.

------
room505
After Winamp closed shop, I begrudgingly moved to iTunes for awhile. But then
I found Musicbee, which I find to be the best alternative to Winamp.

~~~
rchaud
I used MediaMonkey for the longest time in the mid-to-late 2000s. I downloaded
MusicBee and wondered if it was the same team behind both apps. The UIs were
incredibly similar.

------
5-
Obligatory in-browser reimplementation:
[https://webamp.org/](https://webamp.org/)

~~~
twostorytower
Was just about to post this, you beat me! Such a well done browser clone.

------
punnerud
The Mac version does not work on Catalina (10.15)

------
conradfr
I still use Winamp and if I could have my streaming service catalog inside it
I would be in heaven.

------
__m
I remember when Winamp was cool, then AOL applied its touch of death, 点脉; it
was very effective

------
thatguyagain
I would be so happy if spotify would allow custom skins so I could have winamp
+ spotify.

------
eatbitseveryday
This was great to use back in the day. Do we have the sources for it?

------
huxflux
It really whipped the llama's ass.

------
rhacker
Has anyone created a Rust winamp that runs in web assembly yet?

