Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

http://www.winamp.com/media-player/en

(The HN discussion.)

[Zancarius]

More interesting possible developments. Apparently Microsoft might be in talks to purchase Shoutcast and Winamp off AOL. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, Winamp might persist for another year. On the other, Microsoft would much rather purchase and kill off competitors. So, in all likelihood it'll get rolled into Windows Media Player given the games they've been playing with Skype.

Not that it matters to me all that much currently as I don't use Windows (although when I do, I use Winamp).

[Tirian]

Wow. Sad end to an era (though I remember the AOL purchase the same way!).

[Grimblast]

Not many good alternatives to all the mainstream music players out there. Winamp really did have a good run and I enjoyed the ups and downs of their player. It's too bad someone other than Mickeysoft couldn't snatch it up and keep it going. Time to make that nasty plunge to fully use iTunes I guess. It seems to actually perform better than windblows media slayer.

[Zancarius]

Wow. Sad end to an era (though I remember the AOL purchase the same way!).

Yeah, that's true. I'm actually surprised AOL ran it as long as they did and kept Shoutcast up. Although when Justin Frankel left, innovation and major updates pretty well stopped.

Time to make that nasty plunge to fully use iTunes I guess.

Fortunately, Winamp itself will still be viable for years to come (I understand 2.95 still works just fine, even under Windows 8, for instance). Plus, there are some other lightweight alternatives to both Winamp and iTunes that work pretty well. There's also Quintessential that seems to have a very small but loyal following. I tried using both Foobar2000 and QMP once but kept going back to Winamp, though. I guess that illustrates the llama's strength.

Regardless, there are decent alternatives!