Live data from Hacker News

Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

winamp.com

371–380 of 524 posts

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#372
Huh. Has anyone offered AOL some cash for Winamp? it isn't like it'd be expensive to maintain, if AOL was willing to part with it for reasonable money.

Is there a reason why they'd want to shut down the company rather than selling it for cheap?

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#373
post #318

I remember using Winamp back in the day. At one point in time, it was the only mp3 player out there that didn't absolutely suck. It was pretty amazing how usenet and winamp opened up a whole world of music you just couldn't buy anywhere at the time. Truly a leap forwards in distribution! It's too bad the music industry reacted with such paranoia that they arguably still haven't adequately monetized it. A couple of ye…

I'm surprised you recommend Amarok as a foobar2k user. Amarok is closer to iTunes than it is foobar2k.

Linux users: look for Audacious or DeaDBeeF. They are the best Linux alternatives to foobar2k.

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#374
post #97
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tomahawk. http://www.tomahawk-player.org/ Foobar2k. http://www.foobar2000.org/

Thanks for the Tomahawk recommendation - it was very nearly what I was looking for. Unfortunately it does not support the Mac Play/Pause/etc keys. I'm staggered that such an otherwise well put together application lacks such basic functionality.

Support for this was added a couple years ago: https://github.com/tomahawk-player/tomahawk/commit/5cd9e4962...

I think you ought to file a bug, because it's supposed to work.

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#375
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tonido sucks. Nothing but issues and problems with it and support is non-existent. Stay away!

I wanted a free TonidoPlug but no one read my mind and sent it to me for free, so they're just awful.

you don't even need tonidoplug for it. If you have an old PC or Linux box and you can mount your NAS containing your music, you can just install the free version of Tonido Desktop and stream all of it.

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#376
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a great example of why I don't move all my data to the cloud Music is a great use-case for keeping data in the cloud. You can have a consistent music library and can use any player client-side. Personally I prefer the spotify "all-you-can-listen" model, but I have a bunch of MP3s that aren't on spotify that I seamlessly stream from dropbox (either to winamp or the spotify client, which allows you to sync lo…

There is so much lost when moving to the cloud. Off the top of my head: You tie your data to one provider instead of simply physical media, you lose discoverability (will your kids browse your album choices 30 years from now?), exporting/importing quality is at the mercy of the provider (for example Amazon dropped several dozen mp3s when I migrated a few gigs to Google), and of course you place your data at the mercy…

All my iTunes Match content came from my computer, can be copied to my computer, and can be backed up independently.

There's no reason that The Cloud and Owning Your Files has to be a binary choice. The Cloud can be a great compliment to your local file storage, rather than a replacement for it.

Another example: store your music in Dropbox, which clones it to all your devices (where applicable), and then use Tunebox (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunebox-dropbox-music-player...) as your frontend. Now you have a 'cloud' music service where you control the content, someone else handles the distribution, and everything is cloned locally on all your machines (for your other players to use). Then you can trivially back up your music files from Dropbox to a local backup (or a third-party backup service if all you want is some form of company-independent redundancy.

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#377
Thank you Winamp for the good times.

I wouldn't call it an end of an era though, I feel like Winamp's era ended several years ago.

Now the only program Windows users still use in this day of age that I can't understand is shareware WinRAR. Seriously. (Who hasn't been using 7-Zip for years?)

Re: Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

#380
post #296
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least with winamp, there weren't really any major changes since Justin Frankel left, and what made it amazing back then is still in the program now.

Foobar2000 is also pretty stable and awesome -- just need to drop in the Facets component & it's a dream. Winamp is a nice memory from back in the Napster days tho. :)

I've heard some good things about it. I'll give it a try. Winamp is timeless because it's so simple and powerful. I loved the play next queue. If I felt like a few songs I could throw them on the temporary queue without interrupting what was going on. Great for playing music for others too.
Post reply on HN