![]() Only one version was released under Radionomy’s umbrella though. This was seen by many as the end of Winamp, as everybody knew that without an owner that’s fully committed to long-term development, it was pretty much impossible for the media player to survive.įortunately, Radionomy, a Belgian company that showed up out of nowhere, decided to take over Winamp and keep the application alive, promising major updates and new features in the coming years. The website was supposed to shut down, with the app set to go dark in December the same year. In 2013, AOL officially announced its intention to kill off Winamp. Since then, the development of Winamp barely advanced – as a matter of fact, when the Nullsoft team retired, Winamp was already at version 5, the same that’s still around these days with a few revisions. While the development of Winamp continued under AOL’s umbrella, with Nullsoft becoming the division that was responsible for app updates, the first major turning point took place in 2004 when the team that made the whole project happen decided to leave the company. Frankel founded Nullsoft in 1997 to continue the development of Winamp, only to sell the company to AOL on June 1, 1999. Winamp is the creation of University of Utah students Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev. It’s actually a series of ownership changes mixed with bad decisions and poor releases that turned Winamp into a legend which no longer had a place in a modern world. The popularity of Winamp skyrocketed on Windows 98 and Windows XP, especially thanks to its skin support and the growing community of devs creating them.Īs a quick timeline of Winamp, here’s when each major release was launched:īut the transition from local media players to streaming services isn’t the only one that killed off Winamp. ![]() It came with support for skins and plug-ins, playlists, visualization, and so much more, and this eventually turned it into a must-have app on Windows. But the most successful release was Winamp 2, which was released only a year later and which everybody just loved. While we won’t discuss the versions of Winamp and the updates that the app received, it’s worth emphasizing that the first version actually launched 23 years ago in April 1997. The Winamp usage peaked at 60 million users in 2001 at a time when it was pretty much the most popular media player on Windows. ![]() Those were the days when Winamp was the number one media player out there, with millions of users on Windows and macOS turning to this app to handle their large music libraries. ![]() While the world is all about Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and other streaming services nowadays, there was a time when everybody just wanted (and had no option than) to play their own music libraries. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |