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Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

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Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#21

Post by yareally »

beefsack wrote: post #16

For those on Linux or Windows, Audacious is a beautiful audio player heavily inspired by Winamp 2.x, both visually and mechanically. It supports Winamp Classic skins out of the box, and comes with quite a nice one as stock. Screenshot: http://community.linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/audacious.png Homepage: http://audacious-media-player.org/

I might be willing to switch if it can do a minimal interface[1] like Winamp does (depending on the skin). That's what keeps me on Winamp the most.

edit: Awesome, it does[2] (if you switch to the winamp classic skin). Just need to find how to minimize it to the tray so it doesn't show in the taskbar and get switching between tracks with the mouse scroll wheel working.

[1] http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/901/winampm.png

[2] http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/6972/audacious.png

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#22

Post by brickmort »

beefsack wrote: post #16

For those on Linux or Windows, Audacious is a beautiful audio player heavily inspired by Winamp 2.x, both visually and mechanically. It supports Winamp Classic skins out of the box, and comes with quite a nice one as stock. Screenshot: http://community.linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/audacious.png Homepage: http://audacious-media-player.org/

This is the best discovery I've made all week! Winamp was always my go-to application because it was so compact and less clunky compared to Ttunes. Now that I use linux, Its like i have winamp again. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#23

Post by alok-g »

booruguru wrote: post #15
smrtinsert wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winamp still kicks the crap out of every current music player.

How is it better than iTunes? I'm seriously asking. I'm always hearing people bitch about iTunes, but they never explain why. P.S. Yes. It has been getting bloated, but people have been complaining about iTunes since day 1.

For one, it failed to even install on my Windows 7 x64. I could never figure what was wrong after trying for an hour.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#24

Post by hkmurakami »

I remember finding out the story of WinAmp's creator (Justin Frankel) making a winamp plugin that basically "blocks" AOL AIM advertisements after his company had been acquired by AOL. Just hilarious.

Frankel has programmed a Winamp plugin that blocks out the advertisements in AOL's AIM instant messaging program. The ad areas are currently used to advertise AOL features; install Frankel's plugin and they're replaced by plain white boxes. Start playing a tune in Winamp and the boxes turn into a graphical display that changes with the music.

Even better, Frankel released the software on a hidden page on a server belonging to Nullsoft, and thus to AOL. The description of the software made no mention of its AIM-modifying effects, though the name of the plugin is AIMazing.

http://techreport.com/news/1211/winamp-creator-nullifies-aim...

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#25

Post by bxbb »

beefsack wrote: post #16

For those on Linux or Windows, Audacious is a beautiful audio player heavily inspired by Winamp 2.x, both visually and mechanically. It supports Winamp Classic skins out of the box, and comes with quite a nice one as stock. Screenshot: http://community.linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/audacious.png Homepage: http://audacious-media-player.org/

I've made my switch away from Winamp since they use Bento as their default UI. now I use AIMP, come with Media Library and Tag Editor :) http://www.aimp.ru/index.php

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#26

Post by csense »

Too often, bigcorps acquire successful smaller companies, then try to micromanage them in ways that negate the attributes that make them successful.

If you've bought a goose that lays golden eggs, why would you mess with it? Just collect the gold every day and shut up.

You'd think they'd learn to act like a shareholder and keep their hands off day-to-day operations, just stepping in to support the acquiree when its management asks for help that the parent's in a good position to provide, like expansion capital or coordinated marketing.

Of course, all of this is predicated on the acquisition's actually laying eggs consistently -- the parent corp needs to make it clear that they'll come in with a heavy hand of micromanagement, or disband the acquired business unit altogether, if its financial performance is bad enough.

All of what I've said so far only applies when the acquirer's primary target is the revenue the acquiree is generating; it doesn't necessarily apply to companies that are acquired for specific assets such as talent, branding, or technology.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#27

Post by moxie »

hkmurakami wrote: post #24

I remember finding out the story of WinAmp's creator (Justin Frankel) making a winamp plugin that basically "blocks" AOL AIM advertisements after his company had been acquired by AOL. Just hilarious. Frankel has programmed a Winamp plugin that blocks out the advertisements in AOL's AIM instant messaging program. The ad areas are currently used to advertise AOL features; install Frankel's plugin and they're replaced b…

Yes! I remember this happening but wasn't able to find any reference to it.

I remember that I was already impressed he'd taken someone else's MP3 player, put a GUI in front of it, and sold it to AOL for hundreds of millions of dollars. But when I saw Nullsoft immediately release the AIM adblocker after being acquired by AOL, I knew they were truly amazing.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#28

Post by carry_bit »

soulclap wrote: post #2

I guess I am the only person in the world still using Winamp. Just feels odd when I listen to mp3s and can't look up the ID3 tags with alt-3. And I never felt the need for a 'library', 'database' or huge spaceship cockpit UIs either.

The reason why I use Winamp (and can't stand almost every other music playing program I've found) is because Winamp has the Nullsoft Signal Processing Studio DSP plugin. Being able to adjust the playback speed (affecting pitch and tempo), among other things, is a killer feature for me.

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#29

Post by res0nat0r »

I absolutely love Winamp and have been using it since it came out. All of my upgrades / new installs are always the minimal package without any bloatware crap. I love the small UI footprint that I can minimize at the top of my screen and not block anything else I'm viewing. I think I've been using this skin for about 8 years now: http://customize.org/winamp2/skins/6307

Re: Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012)

#30

Post by SG- »

earlz wrote: post #18
booruguru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it better than iTunes? I'm seriously asking. I'm always hearing people bitch about iTunes, but they never explain why. P.S. Yes. It has been getting bloated, but people have been complaining about iTunes since day 1.

I tried iTunes back in 2009 when I was trying to get some music off of an iPod. Worst user experience ever. When you have to watch 5 minute video tutorials on Youtube to figure out how to do something, your user interface probably sucks. Also, yes, the bloat and the constant updates to support the bloat.

You put music on your iPod or your remove it. It's not meant to bring around to your friends house and take all the music off of it and onto his computer. This is by design.
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