Winamp as we know it is officially dead.

[Eris Lund]

Well, it's happened, if you've been following the news lately or have hung around the Discord server, you might've heard the news of them doing NFTs, but what the heck are NFTs and why should you care? Allow me to give you a quick rundown...

NFT

NFT's are "Non Fungible Tokens" where you essentially own a receipt of you owning a link to something, but never the thing you bought. They're often associated with stolen art (and now recently, people have been stealing from musicians too), scams and legitimate collections consisting of very ugly art of various animals in the same pose with various different things (hats, expressions, etc), not only are people being ripped off, but it's also damaging the environment.

We still have no clue about the release of the player, but to say that the shitstorm was intense on Twitter is an understatement.

What does that mean for us? Is WACUP affected by this?
This means hopefully more users for us, and WACUP isn't affected by this at all, just that some may think that with the Winamp association, people may be turned off.

What will the future of Winamp be?
At this point, it's hard to tell, only further chaos can ensue with them and a bigger shitstorm will come when their new Winamp arrives, so we just have to wait.

[rondiaz]

Whelp, I can say that some tweets on this NFT nonsense is what led me to the WACUP project this week. I had no idea. Very cool and exciting. I was using the Winamp 5.8 release up until this week.

[Axel Slingerland]

Personally, I thought that Winamp was dead (officially or otherwise) years ago. When the creators of Winamp sold Nullsoft to AOLNo, I knew it was going to die any day after that news. Everything they touch goes down the swirlomatic. The only thing that surprises me about it is that it took this long to die. Their screw ups usually have a more immediate terminal effect.

[Aminifu]

Surprising as it may be, AOL did a fairly good job keeping Winamp going after they bought it, imo. They hired good developers to fix bugs and add new features (even if they didn't let some of the user requested changes be made) and payed 3rd parties to support some of the popular features that were not developed internally, such as automatic tagging, automatic playlists and CD ripping. It has taken the current owners to truly kill it.

[Eris Lund]

That is my view and understanding too (although key parts of Winamp, like the Modern Skin engine didn't see as many updates as it probably should have...), AOL at the very least respected the core aspects of Winamp, RN/AV does not.

[dro]

When the creators of Winamp sold Nullsoft to AOLNo, I knew it was going to die any day after that news. Everything they touch goes down the swirlomatic. The only thing that surprises me about it is that it took this long to die.

It was almost 15yrs with them, covering 2.5 (when it went free for all!) to 5.666 along with all of the things that they paid for with license as aminifu noted (e.g. mp3, aac, gracenote < this is what sunk winamp going back to being a viable independent operation).

I get that it's still the popular thing to do to bash on the AOL era (as a tweeny on the discord server was also doing) but it's bashing on the things that would never have happened without their input. Also 'nullsoft' as people seem to think about it & romanticise existed up to 2003/early 2004 when all of those people (most who only arrived due to AOL's money after the 1999 purchase then left).

Yes the time with AOL was bad at points & not implementing things that were often needed didn't help but itunes/apple/smartphones/streaming services is what did more damage to winamp as something people wanted to use. So in someways irrespective of who owns the property, the user base is what led to the ultimate decline & its no wonder why the lot that have now had it for 8yrs are scraping the barrel.

-dro

[NJK]

I get that it's still the popular thing to do to bash on the AOL era

-dro

what if some CEO of AOL had decided not to buy Nullsoft?

my guess is that Winamp would have been dead within a few years and WACUP would never have seen the daylight.
Bash AOL all you want but without them Winamp would have been around this long.

[NJK]

Bash AOL all you want but without them Winamp would have been around this long.

should have been wouldn't have been around this long.

typo

[dro]

my guess is that Winamp would have been dead within a few years and WACUP would never have seen the daylight.

WACUP is a reaction to things not being right & it shouldn't have ever needed to exist but it does due to what's happened & there's numerous other things when it comes to Winamp & community involvement that should have been done differently to not end up in the timeline that we now exist.

-dro

[vendszel]

Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999 has just been released.
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=458120

What does it mean? Will it make things even more complicated for WACUP? /worried

[dro]

WACUP & Winamp are on 2 different paths when it comes to intentions with their development & features sets - one wanting to make a good player without the corporate aspect & the other which has got to at some point starting earning it's keep (or just be made to look good as a going concern for someone else to buy it as the targetspot group stated was the intention over a month ago unless that's now changed &/or they were trolling again).

I don't have any plans on stopping making WACUP as I think there's room for it especially for those that aren't keen on the mismanagement of Winamp over the past 8yrs nor their attempted foray into NFTs earlier in 2022 as well as just not being truthful about things going on (but that's business for you as they need to maintain their perceived value & confirming that no one is working on it wouldn't be good for that).

Everything points to this being a rushed release that appears it's at most a few months work with only 2 beta builds before being released as an RC with the issues that it has. It also raises the question of what's happened to their all new 6.x that was seemingly being worked on until recently as that's not been mentioned now despite earlier hyping of things this year. It all just comes across as rather odd to be restarting a codebase that they didn't want to pay to keep maintained all those years back.

-dro

[Aminifu]

What I've heard, from people trying to use the new Winamp release, is that changing version numbers and calling it a release candidate is just an attempt to convince users that something better than 5.8 is available. Beyond changing how the app is made (code compiled), it is no better, and in some aspects worse, than what is was when AOL sold it.