...a small tribute to honour the great legacy of Winamp.

December 20, 2013 7:04 AM

Spotify marks today's death of Winamp (previously) by releasing Spotiamp, a winamp-inspired player for Spotify Premium subscribers with a built-in shoutcast server and compatibility with Winamp visualization plugins. More info and downloads here
posted by namewithoutwords (21 comments total)

Nicely played Spotify. Nicely played.
posted by gwint at 7:35 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Isn't this a bit like slaying one of your enemies and then wearing their skin like a suit?
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:44 AM on December 20, 2013 [13 favorites]

More like spitting in the llama's eye. That said, it's a nice way of paying tribute to those that paved the way.
posted by arcticseal at 7:49 AM on December 20, 2013

But will it play all my Nintendo NSF files? That was winamp's main function for me.
posted by SharkParty at 7:53 AM on December 20, 2013

I appreciate the attention to detail in paying homage, but I think windows-only is just unnecessarily accurate.

Winamp visualizations are the only thing I miss about windows.
posted by cmoj at 8:29 AM on December 20, 2013

What I really want is for somebody to make XMMS work again.

(The real one.)
posted by brennen at 8:33 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wow, a built-in Shoutcast server? Unencrypted?
posted by mkb at 8:37 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is kind of cool because I don't have to subject myself to the primary Spotify UI. Winamp was never perfect, but it worked well enough for me for like, fourteen years (I missed the other post, so I didn't know it was dead). I've been using Foobar2000 lately, and I don't like it as much as Winamp, but these days, I'm only opening it to play video game music formats, so I tolerate it.
posted by Redfield at 8:55 AM on December 20, 2013

*sniff* It really whips the llama's ass. *sniff*
posted by hanoixan at 8:58 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

:( windows only. Just like the real thing! (back in the day.)

Rumors of an 11th hour buyer...
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 9:04 AM on December 20, 2013

Please don't be Microsoft, Please don't be Microsoft.
posted by symbioid at 9:16 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Please don't be Microsoft, Please don't be Microsoft.

Surprise! It's Oracle! It's now Oracle Advanced Music Playing Package for Small Enterprise, and it costs $2000/yr for their Premier Support Entitlement, without which you can't download a patch that fixes a bug that literally lights your wallet on fire before kicking your dog.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:20 AM on December 20, 2013 [9 favorites]

... and by "tribute" you mean "money grab"....
posted by humboldt32 at 10:29 AM on December 20, 2013

I never understood the fuss about Winamp because it is utterly hopeless with all my wav. files. Windows Media Player generally takes a stab at guessing what an album is and is right a high percentage of the time. Winamp has to be spoon fed every bit of information and it is tiresome to have to edit for every single lossless album I have in my files (and I have a lot). It does fine with MP3s though it gets thoroughly confused if there is a guest artist and wants to file away songs under something entirely different than what it should be. That said, it is still light years better than the piece of shit that is iTunes. If I could find a media player for my iPad that wasn't iTunes I'd be a happy man.
posted by Ber at 11:17 AM on December 20, 2013

I just want the same version of winamp I downloaded in 1998.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 11:55 AM on December 20, 2013

I just want the same version of winamp I downloaded in 1998.

Approximately when in 1998? That would cover versions 1.69 - 2.04
posted by sysinfo at 3:55 PM on December 20, 2013

Bless, that interface brings back memories like an old smell. Making Winamp skins and AVS presets was some of the first stuff I did on the internet that involved being part of a community. AVS in particular was such a flexible bit of kit that I'm very glad to see it being preserved.
posted by lucidium at 4:40 PM on December 20, 2013

What I really want is for somebody to make XMMS work again.

QMMP is an excellent replacement.

Winamp sucked when version 3 came out. Every version after that was also crappy. The reason: part of the fun of the early days of mp3 and digital music was managing files as tough they were your music shelf. Browsing through Windows Explorer and adding files to the playlist manually was fun. I think the whole Music Library paradigm was the final nail in the coffin for seeing music as a tangible thing that occupied physical space -- and of course in the days of 4 GB hard drives, precious hard drive space. Thanks to libraries and clouds digital music is an infinite resource with almost no value.
posted by hellslinger at 5:27 PM on December 20, 2013

Wow, a built-in Shoutcast server? Unencrypted?

Yep. It's like the analog hole, all over again. Which seems appropriate in a product created to honor the legacy of the Winamp era of digital music distribution.

Spotify might be that 11th hour buyer. Their "radio" offerings are so-so. As a product/acquisition target, shoutcast (in particular, the station directory and the APIs that access it) isn't a bad fit for them, and would keep Tunein from completely owning the streaming radio catalog market.
posted by toxic at 12:26 AM on December 21, 2013

So - has anyone noticed that the shoutcast directory still seems to be humming along? I like to imagine that some network engineer said "fuck you" to the big boys and refused to remove them and just said they did, in order to keep this wonderful resource alive...

I've been loading the directory just fine. Or was there a stay? Have the new purchasers been the ones keeping it alive? Or is it just that whatever system I have (nexus7, winamp for windows) have the directory cached somehow? (I don't think so, because I am loading it up fresh each time for a new genre, for example)... What's up with that?
posted by symbioid at 7:50 AM on December 25, 2013

OK - googled it - and they said that it seems there's talks going on, and in the interest of both parties, the shutdown seems to not be happening, so a transition can be made smoothly. Now, please let the buyer be someone I'd at least trust with this.
posted by symbioid at 7:52 AM on December 25, 2013