AfterDawn: News

Sad news: Winamp closing down shop forever on December 20th

After 15 years, the end of an era is here. Media player Winamp will shut down for good on December 20th.

Its parent company, AOL, announced today that the music player and all related services will be closed.



The player was first released in 1997 and offered a light playback tool for MP3s and other audio and video files. More recently, the software added online music streaming, and Gracenote integration.

Reads the Winamp homepage: "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. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release.
Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years."

You can still get the media player here at Afterdawn: Winamp v5

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Nov 2013 15:00

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• 22 comments

• Mysttic

  RIP

  20.11.2013 16:31 #1

• borhan9

  Truely one of the early pioneers in the media playback field was a awesome tool for its time.
  

  Edited by DVDBack23
  
  
  "the mediocre teacher tells. the good teacher explains. the superior teacher demonstrates. the great teacher inspires."- William Aruthur Ward

  20.11.2013 16:47 #2

• Bozobub

  I guess this means the end of ShoutCast..? Damn, a double whammy.

  20.11.2013 17:00 #3

• ivymike

  There's always AIMP.
  

  20.11.2013 18:10 #4

• ivymike

  Wait......Hasn't AOL said this before???
  

  20.11.2013 18:28 #5

• Bozobub

  Yes, but this time it seems more believable, imo.

  20.11.2013 22:55 #6

• nonoitall

  Still using it to this day. :-(
  
  Actually I'll probably continue to do so after they close up shop. So many esoteric formats I listen to only have good support via Winamp plugins.
  

  me on the Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
  me on YouTube

  21.11.2013 00:54 #7

• Bozobub

  What I'd mainly miss is the visualizations. Milkdrop/Milkdrop 2 makes anything on a rival player look amateurish.
  
  Yeah, at least for audio, I have no plans on ever using anything else. Even players with arguably comparable features generally have nowhere near the quality and flexibility of the WinAMP UI.

  21.11.2013 00:58 #8

• zxe

  As some have said RIP, used used you when you where a small baby and saw you grow ( in most ways)

  21.11.2013 06:21 #9

• Gradical

  They should at least release the code as open source :( , please sign this petition:
  
  http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/a...en-source#share
  

  21.11.2013 11:35 #10

• SProdigy

  RIP Winamp. You truly kicked the llama's a**

  21.11.2013 12:25 #11

• Mrguss

  Winamp as open source is no a bad idea, maybe implementing Shoutcast too !?
  

  +5000

  21.11.2013 13:44 #12

• Bozobub

  I'm not certain ShoutCast is actually shutting down; I can't find anything online about it, anyway. Certainly, many people have paid for the service, after all. It's also still arguably one of the most successful net radio hubs extant.

  21.11.2013 15:23 #13

• SomeBozo

  Originally posted by nonoitall: Still using it to this day. :-(
  
  Actually I'll probably continue to do so after they close up shop. So many esoteric formats I listen to only have good support via Winamp plugins. How about VLC, the only thing i don't like with VLC is it's play list. Winamp and this is completely my personal preference which i think others might have, but Winamp's playlist/editor is the best playlist i've seen for any player out there...
  

  21.11.2013 16:34 #14

• ivymike

  Get your programs & plugins while you still can!!
  

  21.11.2013 21:24 #15

• KillerBug

  RIP to the only decent part of AOL. Stopped using it on PC years ago, but it still works well on Android (and VLC just isn't there yet on Android...I don't want to wait 10 minutes for indexing every time I open the app).
  

  
  

  22.11.2013 12:58 #16

• SomeBozo

  Too funny that M$ might pick it up? I bet it would be rolled in and messed up by putting it into windoze media player? Would probably be a piece of $#*#* ???
  
  
  

  22.11.2013 14:25 #17

• Mrguss

  My Winamp play list is holding almost 600 hrs. Of non stop mix music (hits only). Hope this program goes open source.
  

  +5000

  22.11.2013 16:10 #18

• nonoitall

  Originally posted by SomeBozo: Originally posted by nonoitall: Still using it to this day. :-(
  
  Actually I'll probably continue to do so after they close up shop. So many esoteric formats I listen to only have good support via Winamp plugins. How about VLC, the only thing i don't like with VLC is it's play list. Winamp and this is completely my personal preference which i think others might have, but Winamp's playlist/editor is the best playlist i've seen for any player out there...
  Yeah, VLC is a fantastic media player, but even it doesn't touch many of the formats I listen to. Foobar2000 supports most of them via plugins, though the quality of the foobar2000 plugins usually isn't on par with the Winamp counterparts.
  
  Better than nothing to hear Microsoft might keep it alive, though it would be awesome if they open sourced it.
  

  me on the Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
  me on YouTube

  22.11.2013 18:58 #19

• hearme0

  I must say this to all those overly sappy and sentimental fools.....especially those that solely relied upon a single player for GOD knows why................IT'S A MEDIA PLAYER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. Find another solution and get over this.
  
  Personally, I use Windows media player as it works flawlessly in every respect of use I put it to. I will miss Winamp though. It was a staple in my early/starting years of computing so I have much love and respect. Didn't know it was owned by AOL but that would explain their closing it down.
  
  I used to use Winamp to access and hack backdoor radio station streams (in the infancy of radio streaming) to access the 128K streams that were oh so rare back in the day because bandwidth was only for the few so a bunch of radio stations only offered 64K to the general public but had backdoors.

  23.11.2013 23:44 #20

• Bozobub

  Many alternative players don't support what WinAMP does, and still don't have many of the features WinAMP has had for years, all with less CPU and RAM load. The UI, in my opinion, is also much better than most other players.

  24.11.2013 00:00 #21

• Jemborg

  Originally posted by Bozobub: What I'd mainly miss is the visualizations. Milkdrop/Milkdrop 2 makes anything on a rival player look amateurish. Yup.
  
  

  Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
  
  
  

  24.11.2013 09:36 #22