After 16 years and 7 months of its service, Winamp, one of the most popular media players available on cross-platform, has announced its shutdown. The last update of the software has been made available on its website, and after December 20 this year, you won’t be able to download Winamp from the official website.
Winamp’s retirement – who is to blame
We can’t say that this news has surprised much. This media player, after its acquisition by AOL, did very less to give the software any improvement and portray any significant use of it. The fusty update cycle in the past years added very less intuitive features to it. Moreover, it became bloatware. Many tech experts blame AOL and its poor management behind this failure, but whatever be the reasons are, with user base of millions of people, Winamp will be no longer available after 30 days.
The website has put up a small notice on its website which says,
Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download.
If there is any media player which has got its way around with the skins and plug-ins, it is Winamp. Winamp was among the first of the media players to offer so many flashy and adorable skins, and a plethora of plug-ins, yet managing compactness.
The software will go offline forever next month, if you want to keep using it for some more time, you may download Winamp 5.66, the last update version of Winamp from here. While you are at it, make sure to download plenty of skins as well.
RIP Winamp, you will be missed.
Bad news as it is my favorite music player. The player with its plugins have been an essential part of my computers. They will still remain with the plugins Enhancer and 250+band EQ.
VLC too is highly customizable but the interface and terms used in its settings are too technical. Hope something better comes up else will have to learn tweaking VLC over the next few months.
Open source it as was done by Netscape so that we can all keep using it.
you have spotify, groove, vlc, audiacity and other media players with is not difficult to use
Wha? What tweaking are you talking about? It took me a few minutes of skimming to get what each setting was, because it flat out says what it is next to the check box?
Windows, why don’t you just buy Winamp? Please :'(
Any body knows how it earns money….and y ? it is not able to manage …its running cost
I am not sure about how it earns, but the app reportedly made 5 million USD every year.
16 years and 17 months? Wouldn’t that be 17 years and 5 months or is Winamp time in another dimension altogether?
LOL. No, as awesome as Winamp player is, it also follows the same dimension. Fixing it. Thanks for pointing out!