This lead to a rapid decline in Winamp users, and thus through the illegal practice of bundling Microsoft was able to abuse its Windows monopoly to kill off another competitor.īundling is an illegal practice for trust companies, and it always amazes me that they were able to get away with this with no investigation at all. Since WMP7 had support for mp3, most people just used that, simply because that's what mp3 files opened in when they double clicked on them. This allowed Winamp to grow as a successful product, up until Microsoft started bundling Windows Media Player 7 with Windows. Winamp was required to play mp3 files on Windows in the late 90s because Windows Media player did not support the codec. And what mp3-playing software are you using today?
I still remember all the visualizations and custom skins - but does this bring back any memories for anyone else? Leave your thoughts in the comments. (Winamp's developers had been earning $100,000 a month just from $10 shareware checks before AOL acquired the company in 1999 for $100 million.) In May TechRadar wrote that Winamp "is still a great media player.but it now relies on third-party extensions to add features found as standard in more modern players." "There's no reason that Winamp couldn't be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition," their first general manager told Ars Technica in 2012. And last October a Winamp dev posted on Twitter that "a Winamp 5.8 public beta release could be imminent," while the web page at still says " There's more coming soon," with a background image of a llama.
But that post has been updated five times - as recently as last October - with "info about the next Winamp release," each linking to a thread on Winamp's forums which offer tantalizing glimpses into a still- ongoing development process. So did they? Radionomy's Winamp page is still showing download links - though they now lead instead to a forum post which says "code licensed to the previous owner" is being removed or replaced. Then in December of 2015 Vivendi Group became that company's majority shareholder, stirring hopes that the company might one day launch a revamped version of the classic mp3 player from 1997.
The last update on Winamp's Twitter account was September of 2015, though it announced that they were looking for a new senior C++ developer. An anonymous Slashdot reader tries to explain what finally happened to Winamp:ĪOL planned to discontinue Winamp in November of 2013, but instead sold it to the Belgian online radio service Radionomy. Winamp was released more than 20 years ago, and last week marked the 15th anniversary of the release of Winamp3.
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