AOL has the stink of death. Everything they touch goes to hell. A few examples, NullSoft, Netscape, Time-Warner(Formerly AOL-Time-Warner). I wish someone would put AOL out of its misery, for the sake of other unbought companies and programs.

"AOL has the stink of death."

You took the words out of my mouth, although I was going to say "kiss of death."

They kill everything they touch. They had a great business model but lousy software, lousy developers, a lousy beta testing system, and lousy products. Now the business model is going down the tubes too, and well deserved.

Whilst WinAMP 5 has the marvellous facility to provide me with literally thousands of pro and amateur radio stations 24/7 with little resource drain then it'll have a loyal fan for life in me.

SHOUTcast was WinAMP's ace in the hole and whist one media player may play video better, and another may organise better, (though I doubt it,) and a couple more even feature radio, (albeit either paid for or very lacking in choice,) there is absolutely nothing that comes close to WinAMP for sheer, all-round, beauty.

It even has the best damned visualisations on the planet! Let's face it, in it's current incarnation, (or even at 2.x for the die-hards,) it plays most formats well and without hogging, it has plug-in architecture, (that cannot be taken away and allows others to add to its' portfolio of features,) it's skins are k.e.w.l. as hell, and if it never sees another revision, thanks to those nice people at AOHELL, it'll still be the best 'all-rounder' on the planet.

N.B. I even use mine with an alarm plugin to wake me up every morning to a jazz station from across the globe. For parties, I wire it up to a 42" plasma screen with some trippy vis such as MilkDrop or R4 and stream a funky station that announces the artist and track on screen...
The list goes on... Long live WinAMP!

Hell YA NullSoft !!!!
Get a mammoth tech player "AOL/Matsus***a"
to buy what amounts to a bright shinny thing for millions,walk away with cash in hand ,start another succesful company (Ea games-Trip Hawkins) and watch as AOL scratches it's head like a Neanderthal and uses purchased shinny thing as a nut cracker. 3do's M2 system was bought by Matsus***a who basicly did nothing with it,$100 million nut cracker.

Winamp will just lose it's rank as #1 mp3 player, not die(for a few years anyway). I've been using
v2.XX for years, it has options i use frequently, why change. I still love ya NullSoft LONG LIVE LlAMA'S !!

I do not know much about Nullsoft and AOL, but I love to use Winamp for Mp3-s.

I'm sure the Nullsoft team started by believing in what they did and they do not believe any more, so they have resigned. In a big (global) company you are not yourself any more; as a part of the "assembly" you just have to play... when you are enough about playing... you resign. It is about the less life we have.

What performs better? A TV/VCR/DVD Recorder or seperate high quality components. WinAmp will always be a quality PC audio component. Open-ended as open source...allowing users to add components via plug-ins...WinAmp is capable of playing just about any audio file source. This is a sad day. I do not want a mp3,wav,ogg,flac,ram,vcd,mpeg1,2,3,4, everything player. I want WinAmp 3.0 with great visulazations. Its what it did great. I want a great player for DIFFERENT content. I DON'T EXPECT YOU to be great at everything. Don't ruin my software. That being said I still like WinAmp 5.0....especially the skins.

Will anyone really cry? I doubt it.

Parts of Winamp 3 are in open source.

As for Winamp 5, I'm sorry to see it go. It was the king. I hope that Winamp can be open sourced. Or atleast the Winamp Clone XMMS can be made into windows. Both have great features. XMMS can easily be adaptable to Windows with new features or improvements.

WinAmp was my only mp3 player and it will remain. Long Live WinAmp.

This is really sad news I my eyes. I love WinAMP and I just other software by Nullsoft like NSIS. I hope that the developers continue to develop these things or start another company and develop such software or create new stuff.

with regards to NSIS >> http://forums.winamp.com...?s=&threadid=198931

-daz

I, for one, will miss winamp. Until recently (started to use media center from jriver) its been my only media player. I remember dumping winplay (circa 1997) and going to winamp and never looked back. However, media center came to v. 10 and it just kicked ass. So winamp, old friend, you will be missed.

The only decent media player out there (in my opinion) is now gone. Bring on the bloat!

All software is destined to fall. Winamp is no exception. I thought it was going to last at least to the 7.x version. It did a h*ll of an upgrade when it went from v3 to v5. It is stable now at 5.05. Open-source is a great idea, maybe bringing some new features.

And I bet WA5 will keep working, too, even if they cancel the product, which I seriously doubt. Nobody's forcing you to upgrade/delete/switch applications.

Windows Media Player? Ha. I'd rather eat glass.

No matter what happens to players around us, we users are still alive, and will remain using the player for some time. I for one am still a supporter of Sonique. And it is in my opinion one of the best players ever. I think that Winamp, with its big userbase, will continue to have the support which might (I stress the word 'might') make the developers go for it again. Pray that no company will destory such a product should it happen.

Unfortunately once a program has been developed there's nothing more to be done. All software is destined to this fate. (For instance, how many more features does one need in a word processor?)
Winamp is a good program, and unless we get another revolution in the way music is stored, there's nothing more that could be added to the program. And with a freeware business model, there's no future returns after the product has been produced.
On the bright side, Microsoft is likely to reach this point someday.

So ... what will happen to them ? Will this saga continue ... everything keeps on repeating ... even if it`s bad and evil ...

To the remaining few: just "accidentally" release the source code of Winamp 5 to the masses, and see how quickly other independent developers will snag a copy and run with it. As much as AOL would threaten anyone, they have no financial benefit of pursuing academic developers -> they are the bread-and-butter of AOL's ISP services! If they make no money off Winamp5, then its release makes zero difference to them.

Leaking the source code doesn't mean it is all of sudden open-sourced and free to use. AOL could still take legal actions.

If that were the case, Microsoft wouldn't be so worried about their windows source code leaked on the internet: http://www.neowin.net/co...17509&category=main

Even if you don't make money from it, doesn't mean it's yours to do what you please.

Like most of you, I remember listening to my first mp3 on WinAmp 1.x and thinking, "wow, this is the future". Those guys at NullSoft changed the way we ALL think about digital audio and we should be wishing them well in their next job - I'm sure their great minds will help produce amazing software that continues to change the future of computing.

Seems a shame to think that a program that wipes the floor with Media player is struggling to stay alive. I just found out how great it is. If every user donated $1 or its equivalent in their currency AOL could probably go GNU>

No, it couldn't in its current state. Many of the encoders/decoders are NOT owned by Nullsoft/AOL. For every download, AOL is required to pay the owners of the license a fee (what it is, I don't know).
Winamp Pro costs money just for this reason. Most, if not all, of the money required for a Pro registration goes to Sonic and other companies that provide the encoders.

As of now, Winamp's code is highly mature and it is doubtful that people who have never seen the code before would be able to improve it or add to it without damaging the code.

Plus, if Winamp was bought from AOL, hosting would have to be moved off the AOL servers, and given the immense amount of data on the servers and the bandwith required, it would not be an improvement.

I remember the first MP3 I ever heard.. It was "Da Da Da (Ich Lieb Dich Nicht Du Liebst Mich Nicht Aha Aha Aha)" by Trio. I played it with WinAmp.

We owe a lot to Nullsoft.. THEY are the ones who "Really Whip the Llama's A$$"

A program is only as dead as the community around it and i don't see a dead community. People are still starting to use Winamp (just going by the noob posts in the Tech Support forum) and plugins, etc are still under active development (which is where the main focus of Winamp things have been over the last year or so).

Just because all of the original members have left Nullsoft and the impending doom of AOL does not mean that the program is dead. How long was it between 2.8x and 2.9x coming out? By that time scale Winamp should have been classed as dead a few years back. So what if there aren't many new builds doesn't that indicate that the program is stable? Isn't that what people want, stable software. If not then give me 5 minutes and i could make you something to crash Winamp and the OS like it's going out of fashion.

The fact that this has only just been picked up on is quite sad really since it's been a known fact since before 5.04 came out that there was not much of a development team left, why not call the death throw then?

Now i may be ranting but when you see people coming along and going 'oh so winamp is dead now' when a new build is under progress, it does somewhat get on my wick. Winamp is more than just a program since there's a whole community around it which is what has helped make it what it is. When that community dies then that is when Winamp dies.

-daz

HEAR HEAR

You're right. The winamp community is alive and kicking and there's many people that can get the open-source and refinate it...

Winamp helped usher in the era of MP3. While not always the best, it's dominant presence, easy of use (and installation for consumer level users) went a long way to help MP3s permeate the Net.

So, so long (if true) Winamp, and thanks.

I wonder what this means for another pioneering application that AOL took over, ICQ. AOL already went back on their word to not introduce banners and other advertising into the application. And for those who may remember, AOL has all but killed yet another pioneer, CompuServe.

AOL, once it's gone (and it will be), what nice little swath of destruction it will leave in its wake.

Winamp should have stopped at 2.9, it achieved all it needed. 3.0 was just silly and 5.0 was a nice try at a media player for video but with other better video players it wasn't neccessary.

1. Winamp 2.9 = good
2. Foobar 2000 = Great ( love the tabs )
3. Media player 6.4 or ZoomPlayer and sometimes WMP10

Well, I kinda disagree there, if they would have stopped at 2.65 that would have been great for me. In my opinion it was the perfect ballance of quickness and capability and function (except the lack of video support) not to mention I have found it much more stable than the 2.9 versions. I still use Winamp 2.65.

P.S. I created an account just to comment here :)

I forgot to mention, I have always been a big fan of Nullsoft so this is really a shame

Why would anyone use winamp, its ugly, sounds bad...why mention it all.

Use Foobar it takes a while to get used to it, but after you never leave for crap like winamp and so on.....

Who do you think started the revolution? It certainly wasn't foobar.

That and foobar is the worst name ever. foo is probably the stupidest "word" i've ever heard as well. damn us programmers.

I don't think it is good to insult a player which changed the way we use computers. Foobar might be better, but the start was not created by it.

Yes Winap is dead!! (i'm not the best speller but at least get the item in the topic right :) )

If it hadn't been for internal conflicts over Winamp then fb2k wouldn't have appeared (as i've read things so the point is mute).

Does it matter what player you use as long as it suits what you need? Fb2k is a decent program (i used it for a while myself) but it's not suited for everyone and trying to force feed it down people is not the way to go. Use what you want to use not what people make you use!

-daz

foobar

foobar may be small and fast and s*** but its about as userfriendly and ugly as a full diaper... so IF winamp is ever completely killed off one day foobar is definetly not where I'll go.

foobar? Sounds much like an acronym of swear words ripped from an old movie.
Formerly: "fubar" F***ed up beyond all recognition.
The name itself pretty much sums it up. Long live WINAMP!
AOL - Age Of Los**s

Foobar is userfriendely, if you just start using it more you will notice..

you're missing the point of user friendly. i shouldn't have to use it more for it to be user friendly. it should be immediately user friendly.

If you're used to a certain program (ie Winamp) a different program may seem less user friendly because you are so used to the other. Foobar is an excellent audio player - the best out there, IMO.

Winamp is also an excellent program, but I'm with those who never liked the versions beyond 2.XX. It's kind of sad to see Nullsoft disappear, but the nature of the internet is such that other Nullsofts will come and go. The bureaucracy of companies like Microsoft will never allow for the kind of "labor of love" development that creates great stuff like Winamp.

It's been a long time coming. Hopefully aol stop supporting it and release it to the open source world.

With WMP, iTunes, VLC and many other contendors that support more file types winamp was destined to fall.

I feel sorry for the devolpers, but rest assured that they can always make something else!!

This news is very disappointing indeed. I'm not sure about Itunes, but I would have to disagree that WMP plays more file types. As far as I know, Winamp can play everything that WMP can play plus ogg and flac. To me, the ability to play ogg files is extremely important. Plus, if winamp does not play a certain file type out of the box, you could almost certainly download a plug in that would allow it to work with that file, and that has always been my personal favorite aspect of winamp. I won't even say how I feel about AOL, but to put it lightly I think it's a shame that they succeeded in squoshing a fantastic piece of software and discouraged the creative minds who worked so hard to write it in the first place. Just my thoughts.

I found a program called Quintessential Player.
This program runs a boat load faster on my machine. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed winamp, but v5 looked cool, but ran dog slow.
Quintessential Player run wonderfully.
Give it a try.

AOL had never made any of their acquisitions work: Nullsoft and Netscape are just two examples. Fortunately the open source Mozilla project is now under mozilla.org and the project has taken a turn for the better, releasing version 1.0 the highly popular browser Firefox yesterday (www.getfirefox.com).

For those who are looking for a music player, there are two good options: Quintessential player (www.quinware.com) and foobar2000 (www.foobar2000.org)

Same with me, I used Winamp until I discovered iTunes.

It's unbelievably better then any other musics player. It is like the Firefox or web browsers.

Rated No.1 by the Australia PC magazine and rated the No.1 digital jukebox in the world.

Recommened highly.

Winamp 5 is slow? Sure, it might not handle well on a 386 PC but go figure. It takes less than a second to load Winamp with a multimedia hotkey, then it's easy listening. I've always prefered the standard classic skin so I wouldn't know about slow. AVS is also a great attribute of Winamp.

Quintessential Player

http://www.quinnware.com/

Thi king is dead, long live the new king!

I never really liked Winamp 3.x nor 5 because they were slow to respond on my laptop -- HP Pavilion ze4300. They performed slower than WMP 9 and 10 respectively in my experience.

I still like to use Winamp 2.81 just for MP3 playback because of its small footprint and lightning fast response, but WMP 10 is my player of choice for all other audio and video playback.

I don't have any faith in AOL breathing in new life (and speed) to WinAMP and have a feeling that the program will eventually die off or be incorporated into another AOL offering.

Once again America On Line has taken a worthwild product and shot it down with it's buy it up and either drive everyone away or turn it into crap. Whats next?? The next demise we can hope for is AOL going down in flames with it's declining user base, perhaps people will wake up and smell the roses.

AOL paid big bucks for winamp for a reason. That reason never beared fruit for them so it is understandable why they would put a lid on it. Windows media player, itunes and real have relegated winamp to just a standalone player and AOL is not interested in that.

But it's nothing to cry about, all the players involved got their worth.. well maybe except AOL

AOL = RIAA

Hum... I totally disagree about that version 5 being slow or using too much cpu.

Use the Winamp Classic Skin and u will get the same performance as Winamp 2.

Looks just like the old Netscape situation

A damn shame is what it is. But, I'm satisfied with Winamp's current feature set to use it for awhile longer. I probably would only replace it with a winamp clone that allows me to sort by audio length. :)

Uhm.. you CAN sort by length, or filesize, or just about anything you can think of. Damn you people knock the program and haven't even seen half of it. The media library rocks and i have yet to find a player with something like it. You can even sort by most or least played, recently added, create queries, etc.
It plays every audio file I've seen and almost every video. THe problem with video has always been codecs. Other programs seem to know how to figure out which combo works right - winamp is a little braindead. You have to use a program like GSpot Codec Information Appliance to change around certain filters' "merit". It sux, but with a little tweaking it CAN play just about EVERYTHING. It doesn't do a great job of DVDs or DVD files tho. But if there could have continued work.....

oh well. For those who look through ALL the options, winamp 5 does a LOT if you have the machine for it, but can still run well if you have an older machine (classic mode, don't scan 8000 mp3s into the database...)

Anyone keeping an eye on Winamp knows things haven't been that great since the launch of 5.0, slowly, ever so slowly, it is dying. It's a wonderful product and I use it daily. If it does die for good, we do still have foobar2000 ... but its development has slowed dramatically as well of late.

s***ty... now the only competitor wmp10 will have (assuming people stop using winamp) is foobar2k to which the main userbase will hesitate to switch too

This bring back horrid memorys of Sonique. I used to work closely with the original team Sonique beta testing and developing plugins (mostly visualizations), HB, Scir, and the rest of the gang; it was so sad when that all got taken apart after Lycos purchased them. I'm sorry to hear that AOL has done the same with Nullsoft. Never followed Nullsoft and WinAmp much because of focusing on sonique, but to see these good independent developers get purchased, then driven into the the ground by the corporate machine... That's good old american capitalism for you.

I'm bummed out by this. I've bounced around nearly a dozen players trying to find one that fits my needs and moods (and doesn't crash or hog the machine). I like WA 5.05 and will probably keep using it until they sneak in some sinister code stream to kill it or something evil like that. It seems the obvious recipe for eventual doom is to do only one thing (in this case: music players). Netscape, WordPerfect, WinAmp, to name a few, were all beaten down by conglomerates with more diversified operations to spread and cover costs, yada yada. If anyone thinks they're going to make it big in software these days, they better also make cars, microwave ovens and kids toys.

i was with winamp during the Napster era, left during the xp era, plan on rejoing the pionner of Gnutella. let aol rot in corporate hell. All Hail Nullsoft.

Yea, guess what , version 5.06 is released.So much for ur predictions, huh?:)

When you read this, please understand, that this is by any means no complain, but expression of my emotions trying to bring some truth to the internet community about events that took place which have been hidden from public. Although, this may read as some sort of conspiracy, this is a true story, how history really happened.

Let me begin stating that my life for the past 5 years was hell.

Truth is, Justin didn't invent WinAmp. Actually Justin Frankel is a liar, but he paid me (Dmitry Boldyrev) off to not say anything. The reason why I had to take the gag and not bring the case, which I intended to do at the time, was because I was poisoned (but who did it? hmmmmmm good question, I am still trying to figure that one out) and couldn't deal with court proceedings. For the past five years I was in hawaii trying to deal with the poison, breathing it out of my body. Try day long meditations, Mr Frankel, maybe it will bring you a better understanding of the world surrounding you. Or I guess you're not interested in the truth, the money has blinded you completely. Sure, having few millions in the trust account you probably have a different view on the world.

I would like to share what I have done with the money that I received from the miniscule settlement that I received.

1) Started a vegan restaurant in Hawaii, which was rated #1 by PeTA this year

2) Helped many musicians

What do you have to show for your millions, Mr Frankel? Yes, we've heard about your love for cars. Is this best you can do? Lets not mention your guitar playing skills, because I dont know how many people are laughing behind your back.

Before I begin, I'd like to introduce the reader to the fact that I am very sad for this country, and result of its so called elections. It just shows to me that democracy isn't happening here. The result of my history of events that took place in my life, I am starting to question, the very reason why AOL bought WinAmp. My realization led me to believe that AOL needed WinAmp to establish control over media on the internet, music media and radio media in particular. I've met a guy (right hand man of Steve Case @ AOL) Dave Cole?, nice guy actually. Interesting, at his lecture he kept referring to people as software, maybe he needs a break from his work and learn to understand people on more personal level.

As I was so closely involved, nobody even asked me about Nullsoft sale to AOL. I guess they never considered me anything more than a stupid russian who we can **** over as much as possible. But personally, I always considered myself a 50% cofounder of Nullsoft (any thoughts on this, Mr Frankel?). So is this the American tactic that we keep hearing about, invite people from other countries, rip off their ideas, enslave them, use their ideas and talant to make money, and then take it off shores to further enslave everyone around? Long live WTO?

So, now to the story: what TRUELY happened with the whole WinAmp thing.

I met Justin Frankel at CADE lab at University of Utah in mid 1997 where we both attended engineering school. He was at the time interested in computer graphics, working on Plush 3d gfx engine. Goruraud shading, nothing too fancy. I guess it was quite fast. I was an old-skool music demo coder person. In 1989 I discovered Scream Tracker for PC, which inspired me to write music software, and ever since I've been amazed by computer music, which led me to creation of first gui mp3 player-MacAmp. Beforehand, I wrote many other music-players (for PC and Mac), like MacMikMod, DSM player, MusEd and so on. I've been programming music editors and players since my x286 in DOS in 1988. I had to switch to Mac because of my boss, professor of chemistry Jack Simons, where I worked at the time, who was a big Mac head. I am thankful to him eternally! As much as I like Windows (which is probably not true ;) I think Mac is just a better platform. Funny, I was just at my friend's ISP place, where he'd fix virus problem for all the PCs. There was quite a few of them lined up. Heh eh :)

I introduced Justin to my project MacAmp and suggested he made windows version out of it. Him and I were friends back then. Eating dry ramen, college students, what more to say. Until that point, when it became clear that big money was going to be involved. Quickly (with help of his father, Blake Frankel who recently changed his name, just in case? who was a lawyer) I was "nicely" thrown out of company, like I was never even a part of it. Nice plot. Sure it's easy to **** somebody over when they are only in the country for five years and whose parents, are actually distinguished scientists from Russia, who had absolutely no sense of business. School of hard knocks? I remember going around telling people at chemistry department that mp3 is going to be future of music, and everyone laffed saying they already happy with CDs. If you ask me, I have a Technics MK3D sitting next to me. Nothing beats LP mastering ;) and I am starting to like CDs again. ;)

At some point I suggested that we make mp3 radio out of MacAmp and WinAmp, he of course understood what I was talking about, but didn't implement it until it was safe to do so.

I even know that Nullsoft sent out spies into Napster, which later resulted in creation of Gnutella. I know Shawn, and everyone involved in Napster in early days, and they know. I talked to them on the phone, they called me and told me the story.

If you doubt this, ask creator of unix code Amp, Tomislav Uzelac, who actually had to sue Justin to prove that Nitrane was AMP based, which Justin said it wasn't.

What about countless hours of time my friend Tima spent supporting WinAmp at early days? Did you help him out? After all he was the inventor of the WinAmp's moto ("It really whips the Llama's ass").

Reason why I am writing this, is because I am finally better, yes I have a lot of anger in me, still, which I'd like to let go. And best of all I don't give a s*** anymore, I am going to talk, and this is my public statement. I am going to post this everywhere I find a lie mentioned. We can't continue lying, if we do, we'll destroy ourselves and our world.
This is my FINAL realization.

You want to ask me why I created MacAmp and WinAmp? I didn't create it for five majors (record companies) to take their music oppression, which we've been hearing in the stores for a decade (same s***) online and sell it. I created it to free music completely, help mind evolve and awaken everyone's emotions (what government doesn't want us to have apparently or why can't we gather and celebrate life together without alcohol?). I am not here to say that Nullsoft is bad or not, whever they did more good or bad, but to state what kind of people they are, and by far not heros they proclaim to be. Unfortunately for me, my health was compromised, and I was unable to carry on my mission. Sorry world. Although I still have a lot of anger towards these guys. Despite this, I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper, they are great programmers, and wished, they were better people, and for the record: they didn't invent the idea like they claim it. BTW, I don't know why Tom Pepper has so much anger towards me.

C'mon man, you made $10mil out of the deal for hosting (winamp.com) website and writing a tiny little server application.

And Robert Lord, what's up with all this sabotage with macamp.com domain. You people are... I have no words for you. Make money and sink a sick person down the drain. Would you do that to your own mother too if you could make money off it?

Do you people realize WHERE you live? Maybe you should.

In the end, I invite the reader to refresh on an article on cnn I gave interview for stating about freedom of music.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/...saltzman_mp3/index.html

Thank you for your time reading this, I know it's a bit long, and formatting might be a bit off.

May love fill our lifes and may god(s) help us reunite and bring peace! This is why I am making this post. To resolve my anger towards gods who created this situation for me, to teach me something? I will continue to trust, and have faith in humanity, as I've ever done.

So now that I feel better, I'd like to send my love to all my friends who helped me through hardest years of my life, I love you! You know who you are.

Dmitry, the inventor of MacAmp and WinAmp.

MP3 Players
In the early 1990s, Frauenhofer developed the first, however, unsuccessful MP3 player. In 1997, developer Tomislav Uzelac of Advanced Multimedia Products invented the AMP MP3 Playback Engine, the first successful MP3 player. Two university students, Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev ported AMP to Windows and created Winamp. In 1998, Winamp became a free MP3 music player boosting the success of MP3. No licensing fees are required to use an MP3 player.