
Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012) - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/winamp-how-greatest-mp3-player-undid-itself/#
======
noonespecial
Ahh Winamp and the summer of '97. The first MP3 player I found that could play
in real time on my AMD 486DX4-100, allowing me to put an MP3 player in my car.
A great big joyride of inverters, regulators, monochrome 16 shade plasma
screen and trackball.

And girls, looking away from their jock boyfriends and saying "You just choose
it on the screen and it _plays_!? There's hundreds of them, _they're all on
here_?!"". It was like driving around a time machine from the future.

Nullsoft, the leading edge of the shockwave that turned geeky cool.

------
hkmurakami
I remember finding out the story of WinAmp's creator (Justin Frankel) making a
winamp plugin that basically "blocks" AOL AIM advertisements _after_ his
company had been acquired by AOL. Just hilarious.

 _Frankel has programmed a Winamp plugin that blocks out the advertisements in
AOL's AIM instant messaging program. The ad areas are currently used to
advertise AOL features; install Frankel's plugin and they're replaced by plain
white boxes. Start playing a tune in Winamp and the boxes turn into a
graphical display that changes with the music.

Even better, Frankel released the software on a hidden page on a server
belonging to Nullsoft, and thus to AOL. The description of the software made
no mention of its AIM-modifying effects, though the name of the plugin is
AIMazing._

[http://techreport.com/news/1211/winamp-creator-nullifies-
aim...](http://techreport.com/news/1211/winamp-creator-nullifies-aim-ads)

~~~
moxie
Yes! I remember this happening but wasn't able to find any reference to it.

I remember that I was already impressed he'd taken someone else's MP3 player,
put a GUI in front of it, and sold it to AOL for hundreds of millions of
dollars. But when I saw Nullsoft _immediately_ release the AIM adblocker after
being acquired by AOL, I knew they were truly amazing.

~~~
jamesaguilar
$86 million.

------
eksith
Every promising technology/company that gets gobbled up by the bureaucratic
mega fauna enviably end up being re-chewed and strewn about as piles of dung
(to be burned to repel mosquitoes).

AOL's problem is that it's a corporation first, a product/service creating,
maintaining and selling entity second. Oh sure, the execs may think they're
"creating and maintaining" a product/service, but their mindset is "how do we
make money out of X"; not "how can we provide the best X we can and make money
out of it".

Once any entity defines its existence by finding means of validation for said
existence rather than innovation and inspiration, it's doomed to mediocrity
and, later, collapse.

~~~
illuminate
"AOL's problem is that it's a corporation first"

Isn't its main problem today that it's a content farm operated by new-age
antivax no-signal-to-noise peddler Arianna Huffington?

~~~
eksith
Ha! Yes, that too.

Of which I'm sure they were thinking how to make money off of first, not how
the hell to increase quality afterwards. Kinda like what happened to Java
after being inherited by Oracle when they bought Sun.

------
beefsack
For those on Linux or Windows, Audacious is a beautiful audio player heavily
inspired by Winamp 2.x, both visually and mechanically. It supports Winamp
Classic skins out of the box, and comes with quite a nice one as stock.

Screenshot: <http://community.linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/audacious.png>
Homepage: <http://audacious-media-player.org/>

~~~
yareally
I might be willing to switch if it can do a minimal interface[1] like Winamp
does (depending on the skin). That's what keeps me on Winamp the most.

edit: Awesome, it does[2] (if you switch to the winamp classic skin). Just
need to find how to minimize it to the tray so it doesn't show in the taskbar
and get switching between tracks with the mouse scroll wheel working.

[1] <http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/901/winampm.png>

[2] <http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/6972/audacious.png>

~~~
beefsack
If you go to preferences, and look at the plugins tab (I believe in the
general plugins section) you'll see there's a plugin for a system tray icon.
After enabling, you can hide to the system tray by clicking the system tray
icon. Most useful plugin IMO.

~~~
yareally
Oh thanks. I was hoping it would just remove the app from the taskbar and keep
the player still on the screen (like winamp). Not quite the same, but it can
probably be tweaked in the source.

------
soulclap
I guess I am the only person in the world still using Winamp. Just feels odd
when I listen to mp3s and can't look up the ID3 tags with alt-3. And I never
felt the need for a 'library', 'database' or huge spaceship cockpit UIs
either.

~~~
coldtea
> _And I never felt the need for a 'library', 'database' or huge spaceship
> cockpit UIs either._

Probably because you never experienced them.

There are things "you feel the need for" (e.g water in a desert) and things
you have to use for a while to say "fuck, how did I do without those?".

~~~
yareally
Winamp also has a library built into it. Whether one chooses to use it is
another thing entirely though.

------
Daiz
I personally switched to foobar2000[1] years ago and never looked back. Some
of the big reasons back then were gapless playback and proper unicode support
(I have quite a bit of Japanese music in my collection), and the fact that it
doesn't do anything unnecessary (like try to be a video player at the same
time) - _it plays (and manages) music, and does it very well._ It has served
my music player needs ever since - it's really rock-solid and still actively
developed to date (and it's very customizable).

[1] <http://www.foobar2000.org/>

~~~
chjj
If anyone is interested, see deadbeef for the linux equivalent of foobar2000:
<http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/>

(But personally, I use MOC: <http://moc.daper.net/>)

~~~
prezjordan
How do these compare to VLC? Is VLC not actually a good audio player?

~~~
tripzilch
It does the job just fine for just about any format, but playlist management
in VLC is pretty awful, IMO.

edit: I'm using WinAmp for my MP3s, but I might take a look at foobar2000 as
well

------
csense
Too often, bigcorps acquire successful smaller companies, then try to
micromanage them in ways that negate the attributes that make them successful.

If you've bought a goose that lays golden eggs, why would you mess with it?
Just collect the gold every day and shut up.

You'd think they'd learn to _act like a shareholder and keep their hands off
day-to-day operations_ , just stepping in to support the acquiree when its
management asks for help that the parent's in a good position to provide, like
expansion capital or coordinated marketing.

Of course, all of this is predicated on the acquisition's actually _laying_
eggs consistently -- the parent corp needs to make it clear that they'll come
in with a heavy hand of micromanagement, or disband the acquired business unit
altogether, if its financial performance is bad enough.

All of what I've said so far only applies when the acquirer's primary target
is the revenue the acquiree is generating; it doesn't necessarily apply to
companies that are acquired for specific assets such as talent, branding, or
technology.

------
KwanEsq
I've never understood why media players in particular feel they have carte
blanche to completely ignore any attempt at integrating with the system look
and feel. I never really got along with WinAMP due in no small part to that.

~~~
eclipticplane
Back in WinAmp's rise, the "system look and feel" was stagnant and stale.

WinAmp (and other media players) tend to be small on-screen; they are rarely
full screen apps. They should play my music and get out of my way. System
styles and UI are rarely designed for "small form" applications that need to
pack a lot of features into a very small, non-descript space.

WinAmp's themes went above and beyond, of course, but those were at the user's
discretion.

------
aluhut
I'm happy with my winamp...2.95

I never needed more from a mp3-player. I have a small streamrip plugin
installed for years now. This is the only "special" feature in it.

For everything else, I use a different programm and it was never a problem.

------
res0nat0r
I absolutely love Winamp and have been using it since it came out. All of my
upgrades / new installs are always the minimal package without any bloatware
crap. I love the small UI footprint that I can minimize at the top of my
screen and not block anything else I'm viewing. I think I've been using this
skin for about 8 years now: <http://customize.org/winamp2/skins/6307>

------
sehugg
Don't forget AVS (Advanced Visualization Studio). Good old software rendering,
and programmable: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tka07_LC534>

~~~
GlennS
I kept using Winamp for long after it got rubbish because it was the only
thing you could use <http://www.milkdrop.co.uk/> on.

------
noomerikal
After reading this, I am getting a bit nostalgic thinking about winamp and
napster back in the day. I can't believe 15 years has passed. IMHO winamp was
one of the best pieces of software developed over that timespan.

On a sidenote - timely piece as AOL Music just shut its doors -
[http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/aol-music-shuttered-
st...](http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/aol-music-shuttered-staff-laid-
off_b81451)

------
swatkat
I was using WinAmp in its 1.x and 2.x days. When WinAmp started to bloat, I
switched to Billy [0], an ultra-fast and minimal player. Nowadays, I stick to
VLC as I no longer have Windows on my personal laptop.

[0]
[http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy&subpage=billy_co...](http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy&subpage=billy_comparisation)

------
xtracto
Anyone remembers MusicMatch Jukebox? The first versions where quite good.
Specially the capability of ripping to MP3.

Today, two media players I like in Windows is: MusicBee (
<http://getmusicbee.com/> , quite fast last time I tried) and MediaMonkey
(previous versions where good, current versions became bloated).

------
quattrofan
I use Winamp now but only because of its support for FLAC. I hate its UI, its
far too messy and complicated with all kinds of windows that can be docked,
undocked etc.

Its unfortunate the developers have never understood the concept of "less is
more".

~~~
looki
Well, I don't want to sound like an evangelist, but foobar2000 plays FLAC just
fine, with gapless playback and whatnot and the interface is quite the
opposite of Winamp's.

~~~
quattrofan
Ok well an initial install I like that its a lot simpler than WinAmp, but one
major problem is an initial scan of my local music library and it only found
784 songs when in fact I have 4733 showing in winamp. Now they are a mixture
of mostly FLAC but some MP3 and WMA, also a lot of in sub-folders. Does it not
handle sub-folders do you know?

~~~
looki
It definitely handles subfolders. I'm not sure what the problem is, to be
honest. All I can think of is wrong settings in the "Media Library"
preferences.

------
totoe
you remember the geiss plugin? awesome memories!
<http://www.geisswerks.com/geiss/>

------
saejox
I use VLC. It has a playlist, that's enough for it to satisfy my mp3 needs.

------
ciucanu
I still use it with classic skin.

~~~
lurkinggrue
Same here. Just want a simple drag and drop play list.

------
lurkinggrue
I still use winamp.

