Winamp - Marble Texture - Seamless Marble Texture
Features
Features
Podcatcher
See also: Podcastand Aggregator
Winamp can also be used as an RSS media feeds aggregator capable of displaying articles, downloading or playing that same content as streaming media. SHOUTcast Wire provides a directory and RSS subscription system for podcasts.
Media player device support
Winamp has extendable support for portable media players. Device plugins are currently included for iPods and Creative NOMADs, Mass Storage Compliant devices, and devices that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure and ActiveSync technologies, such as those running Windows Mobile.
History
Initial releases
The minimalist WinAMP 0.20a was released as freeware on 21 April 1997. Its windowless menubar-only interface showed only play (open), stop, pause, and unpause functions. A file specified on the command line or dropped onto its icon would be played. MP3 decoding was performed by the AMP decoding engine by Tomislav Uzelac, which was free for non-commercial use. The acronym "AMP" stood for "Advanced Multimedia Products". Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev integrated this engine with their user interface.
WinAMP 0.92 was released as a freeware in May 1997. Within the standard Windows frame and menubar, it had the beginnings of the "classic" Winamp GUI: dark gray rectangle with silver 3D-effect transport buttons, a red/green volume slider, time displayed in a green LED font, with trackname, MP3 bitrate and "mixrate" in green. There was no position bar, and a blank space where the spectrum analyzer and waveform analyzer would later appear. Multiple files on the command line or dropped onto its icon were enqueued in the playlist.
Winamp 1
Winamp 1
Version 1.006 was released June 7, 1997 renamed "Winamp" (lower case). It showed a spectrum analyzer, and color changing volume slider, but no waveform display. The AMP non-commercial license was included in its help menu.
According to Tomislav Uzelac, Frankel licensed the AMP 0.7 engine June 1, 1997 Frankel formally founded Nullsoft, Inc. in January 1998, and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware. In March, Uzelac's company, PlayMedia Systems sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nullsoft, claiming unlawful use of AMP. Nullsoft responded that they had replaced AMP with Nitrane, Nullsoft's proprietary decoder, but Playmedia disputed this.
Version 1.90, released March 31, 1998 was the first release as a general-purpose audio player, and documented on the winamp.com website as supporting plugins, of which it included two input plugins (MOD and MP3) and a visualization plugin. The installer for Version 1.91, released 18 days later, included wave, cdda, and Windows tray handling plugins, as well as the famous Wesley Willis-inspired DEMO.MP3 file "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass".
Winamp 2
Winamp 2, shown with default Base Skin
Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most downloaded pieces of software for Microsoft Windows. The new version improved the usability of the playlist, made the equalizer more accurate, introduced more plug-ins and allowed skins for the playlist and equalizer windows.
PlayMedia Systems filed a federal lawsuit against Nullsoft in March 1999. PlayMedia was granted an injunction against distribution of Nitrane by Nullsoft, and the same month the lawsuit was settled with out-of-court licensing and confidentiality agreements. Soon after, Nullsoft switched to an ISO decoder from the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, the developers of the MP3 format.
Winamp 2.10, released March 24, 1999 included a new version of the "Llama" demo.mp3 featuring a musical sting and bleating.
Nullsoft was bought by AOL in June 1999 for US$80 million.
Nullsoft relaunched the Winamp-specific winamp.com in December 1999 to provide easier access to skins, plug-ins, streaming audio, song downloads, forums and developer resources.
As of June 22, 2000 Winamp surpassed 25 million registrants.
Winamp 3
Winamp3
The next major Winamp version, Winamp3 (so spelled to include mp3 in the name and to mark its separation from the Winamp 2 codebase), was released on August 9, 2002. It was a complete rewrite of version 2, newly based on the Wasabi application framework, which offered additional functionality and flexibility. Winamp3 was developed parallel to Winamp 2, but many users found it consumed too many system resources and was unstable (or even lacked some valued functionality, such as the ability to count or find the total duration of tracks in a playlist). Winamp3 had no backward compatibility with Winamp 2 skins and plugins, and the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported. No Winamp3 version of SHOUTcast was ever released.
In response to users reverting to Winamp 2, Nullsoft continued the development of Winamp 2 to versions 2.9 and 2.91. The beta versions 2.92 and 2.95 were released with the inclusion of some of the functionality of the upcoming Winamp 5. During this period the Wasabi cross-platform application framework and skinnable GUI toolkit was derived from parts of the Winamp3 source code. For Linux, Nullsoft released an alpha version of Winamp3 in October 9, 2001 but has not updated it despite continued user interest.
Winamp 5
Winamp 5 featuring Winamp Modern skin
The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5 Nullsoft justified their non-sequential christening by quipping that 2 + 3 = 5 taking the best parts from both applications. They also joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" ('4 skin' being a pun on foreskin). It was also joked that "Winamp 5 is so good they skipped a number."[citation needed] Winamp 5 was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, with several Winamp3 features (e.g. modern skins) incorporated. Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003. Most of the Wasabi framework built for creating Winamp3 and its components was released as open source, and as of 2005 an active development effort has succeeded in making a standalone version of Wasabi, minus the skinning and scripting modules which were never released.
Winamp 5 comes in three versions. Lite and Full are freeware, and Pro requires registration and sells for US$19.95. The Lite version has far less functionality (largely supplementable with plugins) while still replicating most of Winamp 2's feature set (although the installer for Winamp Lite 5.5.6 at 6899 kB is almost 3 times as large as for Winamp 2.92 at 2389 kB). The Full version offers a richer feature set, including music ripping and CD burning at limited speeds (6x for ripping and 2x for burning). The Pro version features unlimited speed music ripping and CD burning and MP3 encoding.
From version 5.2 onwards, support for synchronizing with an iPod is built-in.
Winamp 5.5
Winamp 5.5: The 10th Anniversary Edition was released on October 10, 2007, ten years after the first release of Winamp. (A beta preview had been released on September 10, 2007.) New features to the player included album art support, much improved localization support (with several official, localized Winamp releases, including German, Polish, Russian and French), and a unified player and media library interface skin. This version also dropped support for Windows 9x.
Derivative works
Unagi is the codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp core technologies as distributed with the AOL software or as an ActiveX download. It powers many AOL media projects, e.g., video@netscape, video@aol, AOL Radio, media playback within AIM.
The AIMTunes feature included with AIM 6.5 was implemented with components and code from Winamp.
XMMS is a player for Unix-like systems (Linux and Unix), which has a user interface that is extraordinarily similar to the Winamp 2 interface. In fact, it can use unmodified Winamp 2 skins. Other media players based on XMMS include Beep Media Player and Audacious.
See also
List of media players
Comparison of media players
List of feed aggregators
Comparison of feed aggregators
List of audio conversion software
References
^ a b April 21, 1997 release date extracted from Winamp.exe 0.20a binary. This version still plays some constant-bit-rate MP3s on Windows XP SP2, but can crash when paused/unpaused.
^ Google Books - Beyond the charts: MP3 and the digital music revolution By Bruce Haring, Chuck D
^ Developer credits extracted from Winamp 5.55 credits screen.
^ Time Warner - AOL Introduces New Podcast Offerings
^ Wired - Winamp Packs on Features for 10th-Anniversary Edition
^ Google books - How to do everything: iPod & iTunes By Guy Hart-Davis
^ License info from Winamp 1.006 Help menu.
^ Version 1.006 release date from help screen, version from executable binary.
^ News page Playmedia website. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
^ Po Bronson (July 1998). "Rebootlegger". Wired.com. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.07/newmedia.html. Retrieved 2007-04-07.
^ Winamp.com (1998-12-02). "New Features listing". http://web.archive.org/web/19981202223045/www.winamp.com/winamp/newfeatures.html. Retrieved 2007-04-07. via archive.org
^ DEMO.MP3 15592 bytes, 32 kbit/s, 22 kHz, recorded in "1997" "Exclusively for Nullsoft" by JJ McKay. Voice only, no music stinger.
^ "Power of 10: The past, present, and future of digital living". Top 10 downloads of the past 10 years. CNET Networks, Inc.. http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6257577-1.html. Retrieved 2006-07-26.
^ a b "AOL Who We Are Website.". AOL.COM. 2004-10-19. http://web.archive.org/web/20041019220723/http://corp.aol.com/whoweare/history.shtml. Retrieved 2007-04-09. from archive.org.
^ Winamp 3 for Linux at FileForum
^ "Winamp Media Player FAQ". http://www.winamp.com/player/faq#10.
^ Winamp Media Player Version History
^ "AOL Announces Winamp 10th Anniversary Edition". http://corp.aol.com/press-releases/2007/10/aol-announces-winamp-10th-anniversary-edition.
^ Winamp 5.5 Changelog
^ a b File listings extracted from installation path and binaries.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Winamp
Official Website
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Media players
Windows
ATunes Adobe Media Player Connect Player CD Player CrystalPlayer DBpoweramp Dell MediaDirect DVD Player foobar2000 GOM Player High Definition Compatible Digital InterActual Player Iriver plus 3 MadCat Media Browser Media Center Media Go Media Player Media Player Classic MediaMonkey Mod4Win MusicBee Musicmatch Jukebox MusikCube PowerDVD QuickPlayer Quintessential Player SNESAmp Adobe Shockwave SonicStage Sonique The Core Media Player K-Multimedia Player WinDVD WinPlay3 Winamp Windows Media Center Windows Media Player Xiph QuickTime Components Yahoo! Music Jukebox Zune
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Palm OS
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Players
Adobe Media Player Akregator Amarok Flock iTunes Juice Mediafly MediaMonkey Miro Rhythmbox Songbird Winamp Zune
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Categories: 1997 software | AOL | Digital audio | Jukebox-style media players | Linux media players | News aggregators | Online music database clients | Podcasting software | Streaming software | Tag editors | Windows CD ripping software | Windows CD/DVD writing software | Windows media players | Windows-only freeware | IPod softwareHidden categories: Articles needing cleanup from December 2009 | All pages needing cleanup | Wikipedia introduction cleanup from December 2009 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from June 2009
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