What's happened with winamp58_3660_beta?

[nostromov]

[..] the post 5.666 release before that went sour but had assumed that it had all been thrown away (note: I refuse on principal to run that beta).

Am I reading that wrong (& sorry if I've missed the mark completely), something's happened with their new /leaked /resurrected software? Is WinAMP not revived?

If anyone in the know is bothered to let *me* know what's going on? Some web links, info, whatever that can allow me to catch-on would be great! Thanks guys!! :)

[dro]

Work continued on Winamp after it was sold in January 2014 until it was officially halted in June 2014. Some stuff was attempted to be done after that but SHOUTcast took up too much time of my time & then I was let go in September 2015.

They tried to bring back some of the other ex-devs (but on a non-paid basis) & between what I'd been trying to do & what they did / reverted / whatever'd it then languished as an unreleased build until it was "conveniently" leaked in September 2018.

They then released the non-leaked version in October 2018 which barely had had anything done to it in over 2 years & to add insult to injury they put it pretty clear placement on the redesigned Winamp homepage that the 5.8 beta (most ignore that detail that it's a beta) is "not an on-going project".

So my take on that is that the original Winamp desktop client is no longer developed & is the main reason behind me doing WACUP (after being convinced to at least revive some of my plug-ins in January 2016) to provide a working & supported Winamp-compatible client since I'm working through replacing the need for using Winamp files with WACUP provided ones. That should also explain why I will not use their 5.8 beta nor re-base WACUP on top of it as my goals is to not have to use any Winamp provided plug-ins & dlls unless there's no alternative option.

2019 was supposedly going to be when they brought out the all new singing & dancing multi-platform but mobile focused Winamp v6. Nothing happened & instead 2019 saw the closure of the Radionomy broadcasting platform with SHOUTcast then being the one that people are pushed towards since they charge to use that. All that grouping of companies is now doing is running SHOUTcast's name into the ground & milking things for what they can as it seems like they've got a fair bit of debt around their necks after the mess of the Vivendi purchase & subsequent buy-back.

Is Winamp dead, as far as active development it seems so (not that it matters for WACUP) & what was meant to be v6 wouldn't have had any links back to Winamp proper. As far as the user base, people are still using it so on that count I don't call it dead but it's seen better days.

-dro

[kasperke]

thx for the detailled update ...i was wondering all this for years now.

[StarBank]

They then released the non-leaked version in October 2018 which barely had had anything done to it in over 2 years & to add insult to injury they put it pretty clear placement on the redesigned Winamp homepage that the 5.8 beta (most ignore that detail that it's a beta) is "not an on-going project".

True, but the website also says they are currently working hard on a new version of the program.

[dro]

2019 was supposedly going to be when they brought out the all new singing & dancing multi-platform but mobile focused Winamp v6.

Websites can say anything that they want & also what they said in both 2014 & 2018 interviews hasn't been the case. Same goes for the "working hard on things" as the version of the site from 2014 until the redesign for the 5.8 beta indicated the same message of apparent development activity despite the formal halting of working June 2014 (not a meeting I particularly enjoyed being in!).

There are signs of major issues with the organisation that owns the rights (e.g. shuttering of their original Radionomy streaming platform, not paying out rightfully earned ad revenue along with changing the terms to put off when it needs to be paid & then ignoring that & the inept handling of SHOUTcast) which makes it hard to believe they've actually bothered to take anyone one to develop what they've talked about.

They didn't want to keep paid developers & did the 5.8 beta mostly in 2016 by getting ex-devs to do it for free which is a piss-take however you look at it. Since as much as I don't like some involved with that, if you do work on it then you need to be recompensated for it.

Likewise I've made my decisions & WACUP is going to continue irrespective of what they may or may not put out as they've made it clear they're not interested in Windows development (one of the few things they've actually been honest about in the little information they have stated) & mobile is the piece of the pie they want but it's far too late.

Anything that comes out would be massively behind the curve with other mobile solutions unless they've hired / outsourced it to a large & knowledge dev team who can get something up to comparable feature parity (which is somewhat unlikely just like how Winamp for Android was struggling & that was with being at least a year behind the curve when it appeared in 2009/10, so a decade on, it's even harder imho).

-dro