Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself (2012) • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by shrikant » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:11 AM UTC

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.

Fwiw, the music library functionality in winamp (IMHO) remains the fastest and best I've seen and used in any media player. And I've used pretty much all of them.

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

#42

Post by noomerikal » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:33 AM UTC

After reading this, I am getting a bit nostalgic thinking about winamp and napster back in the day. I can't believe 15 years has passed. IMHO winamp was one of the best pieces of software developed over that timespan.

On a sidenote - timely piece as AOL Music just shut its doors - http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/aol-music-shuttered-st...

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

#43

Post by salvadors » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 8:54 AM UTC

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.

> I guess I am the only person in the world still using Winamp.

Well, one of the 30 million people still using Winamp.

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

#44

Post by pootch » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:01 AM UTC

Every commenter on this thread is a fking loser. WINamp has been dead for years and will never come back.

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

#45

Post by noonespecial » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:16 AM UTC

Ahh Winamp and the summer of '97. The first MP3 player I found that could play in real time on my AMD 486DX4-100, allowing me to put an MP3 player in my car. A great big joyride of inverters, regulators, monochrome 16 shade plasma screen and trackball.

And girls, looking away from their jock boyfriends and saying "You just choose it on the screen and it plays!? There's hundreds of them, they're all on here?!"". It was like driving around a time machine from the future.

Nullsoft, the leading edge of the shockwave that turned geeky cool.

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

#46

Post by Daiz » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:18 AM UTC

I personally switched to foobar2000[1] years ago and never looked back. Some of the big reasons back then were gapless playback and proper unicode support (I have quite a bit of Japanese music in my collection), and the fact that it doesn't do anything unnecessary (like try to be a video player at the same time) - it plays (and manages) music, and does it very well. It has served my music player needs ever since - it's really rock-solid and still actively developed to date (and it's very customizable).

[1] http://www.foobar2000.org/

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

#47

Post by klearvue » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:19 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #40

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.

Amarok 1 was better, but it's harder to get hold of than winamp :(

Clementine

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

#48

Post by anonymous » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:27 AM UTC

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/

Personally, I've settled on DeaDBeeF in Linux, because almost nothing else can do gapless playback. Or, if you prefer console players, I recommend cmus.

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

#49

Post by forgottenpaswrd » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:34 AM UTC

KwanEsq wrote: post #19

I've never understood why media players in particular feel they have carte blanche to completely ignore any attempt at integrating with the system look and feel. I never really got along with WinAMP due in no small part to that.

Excuse me?

Winamp was one of the the better programs at integrating with the OS that I had know.

it had this thing called skins that made the player look whatever you wanted it to be, including the system look and feel, if you wished.

In fact , if you used a Windows OS theme, you will soon discover that Winamp native interface was much much better at what it did than Windows native(native Windows Media witch Winnamp outlook could emulate was atrocious and super bloated).

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

#50

Post by J_Darnley » Sat, Apr 27, 2013, 9:35 AM UTC

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.

It lacks separation between the concept of a library and a playlist. Winamp has its Media Library which you use to browse and search your media. You then play what you want by putting it in the Playlist Editor. Whereas iTunes and every other media player just plays everything in your library starting with the file you clicked on.

[EDIT] Others have covered bloat, install issues, and its updater.