Comments on: Winamp: 15yr Slide from Media Player Dominance to Obscurity

By: Jackson the Pollock

Jackson the Pollock — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:03:39 +0000

Winamp FTW, baby! Been using it since Musicmatch Jukebox turned into a pile of turds. It’s a good player, keeps track of the library, doesn’t crash, has lots of great features if you explore and know what you’re doing. Could care less about visualization crap (don’t do acid anymore and I’m not two years old, either–”Oooo! SHINY FLASHY THING!)–so that’s lost on people like me. I like its replay gain system, can burn CDs from it (yeah, I still need them for the car), love that it looks up song titles and artists with a great degree of reliability, and the plugin system is so-so, but it’s there, nonetheless.

The article seems like a non-story though, since no strong alternatives are offered as anything that passed Winamp on their way to dominance. True, there’s a crapload of players out there, but there’s not more than a small handful of decent ones that aren’t going to do nasty things to your system in other ways. For example, AIMP destroyed all my file extension associations (and not just the music and video ones, either) when I uninstalled cuz it kept calling home to Russia. That was a shame, too, cuz I really liked it (though it reminded me strongly of Winamp). Using VLC to play audio? Really? Do people really do that? Sounds unusual in my circle of Winders and ‘nix friends.

Nobody uses iCrapTunez save for those few who haven’t figured an alternative, there’s Foobar which is an outstanding program, but its default interface is just way too clunky to bother with. Media Monkey is a good cataloguer and indexer, but apart from that. you’d be a bit daft to use it for serious media indulgence. BSPlayer, Zoom player, Windows Media Player, or a gazillion other hack programs, they’re all out there and have their devotees, but no one else really put it together like the Winamp team did. The idea and the execution are timeless–and precisely why they need to leave it alone and not try to beautify it with baffling bullcrap.

By: Erik

Erik — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 04:08:50 +0000

VLC is, in my opinion based on years of usage, the best multimedia player available – and freeware! But I still use WinAmp a lot because it offers a kick-ass plugin system that VLC still lacks. I can play all sorts of obscure audio formats on WinAmp with the right plugins installed. I can also install custom visualization and audio tuning plugins, too. Funny, I don’t remember WinAmp ever trying to install AOL…

By: Dennis Nilsson

Dennis Nilsson — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:29:55 +0000

Winamp is the best. I use it since it started, up to version 5.05. Newer versions are bad like Real Player.

By: notbob

notbob — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:49:23 +0000

I never upgraded to 5. i stayed with 2.6 until i went to linux exclusively, and went to vlc (i don’t think there is a linux winamp)

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:15:01 +0000

MusicBee or Jaangle.

By: Nucka

Nucka — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 11:21:22 +0000

Still use Winamp almost exclusively. Occasionally it won’t play a video file that Real alt. will, but otherwise, it is my go-to media device.

By: Fingers

Fingers — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 04:26:57 +0000

@jaredmoya Really? Thats odd… Years ago, the default skin changed to the Bento skin – this was offered as default in the installer/updater. A nice ‘all in one’ skin more akin to other players – http://imgur.com/7z3nO

By: jaredmoya

jaredmoya — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:18:04 +0000

? Reinstall it and observe what skin u see. Its the same.

By: kblo

kblo — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:31:33 +0000

Winamp user here too since my first pc ! it’s just as simple as it needs to be.

By: Myles Marcus

Myles Marcus — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:48:15 +0000

Even AOL forgot about it now.