Music player software "Winamp" to official site closing, downloading impossible

Media player who appeared in 1997 "WinampIt is clear that distribution on the site will be completed with version 5.66 (stable version) updated November 20. It is the official site of WinampWinamp.comAccording to AOL who owns the site, it is scheduled to close the site on 20th December 2013, after that it will not be able to download.

Winamp Media Player - MP3, Video, and Music Player - Winamp
http://www.winamp.com/


Although there is no particular notice on the top page of Winamp.com, Winamp.com and its related services will be terminated on 20th December 2013 when moving to the individual page of the product, and the latest version published on 20th November Notice that it will be impossible to download after the 20th of the month is posted.

Winamp Media Player - Free player for MP3, video and music - Winamp
http://www.winamp.com/media-player/japanese


The paid version of Winamp Pro has been removed from the store.


Winamp was born on April 21, 1997. It was Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev who developed. "Nullsoft" which was credited was originally a name used by Ms. Frankel as a software creator and became a company before Winamp was released.

The first published version is "WinAMP 0.20a", the interface is only the menu bar, it is very simple thing that you can open the MP3 file from the menu or drag and drop it on the bar, play, pause and stop And it was free software.


The interface of the player as seen in the later Winamp appeared from "WinAMP 0.92"Spectrum analyzerAnd Waveform Analyzer are now displayed from 0.92.

From version 1.006 released in June 1997, it became the name "Winamp", and the shape of later "classic skin" was completed. It will grow to popular software downloaded 3 million times by July 1998. In the meantime, in January 1998 it was changed from free to paid (10 dollars, around 1300 yen at the time of the market) software.

In version 2 released in September 1998, the playlist function was improved and it became easier to use. However, at this time a lawsuit was filed from a company called PlayMedia and changed the decoder. In June 1999, Nullsoft was acquired by AOL and became a division under the umbrella. In August 2002, Winamp 3 appeared, but in parallel with this, the improvement of Winamp 2 continued, and in December 2003, "Winamp 5" was released with the integration of Winamp 2 line and Winamp 3 line.

After that, improvement of this Winamp 5 has been promoted, the latest stable version of 5.66 was released on 20th November, but at the same time the closure of the site was also announced.

After 15 years of llama-whipping, AOL shuts down Winamp for good | Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/after-15-years-of-llama-whipping-aol-shuts-down-winamp-for-good/

According to Ars Technica, AOL has not been actively developing Winamp much before, and development team seems to have not thought about AOL much about AOL. AOL spokeswoman rejects comment that there is nothing more than announced. Music service bought by AOL at the same time as Winamp "SpinnerJosh Felser, who is a developer and now a venture capitalist (investor) said, "AOL has been selling services for months since the beginning, and Spinner was closed for the first time, It is the end of "It is the end of."

Currently, Felser is seriously considering buying Winamp from AOL and said he already has talks.

In addition, Nullsoft who developed Winamp is a prototype of the current P2P file sharing software "Gnutella」Was released in 2000, the next day has also had the past that was halted from AOL by haste, and it is the focus of future movement.

· Next article:
There is a story saying that Microsoft has started to acquire Winamp.

Will it be negotiating for Microsoft to acquire Winamp for which support is decided - GIGAZINE