Things have changed drastically in the music listening space, where services such as Spotify and Apple Music rein supreme. However, there’s still something to be said about listening to music through files such as MP3. Winamp was one of those classic pieces of software, first released in 1996, that plays MP3s and more.
However, it stopped getting updates in 2013 after parent company AOL shut it down. A newer version was leaked in 2018, but mainly there has been no new releases of the software for a long while. That is until July 22, 2022 when the developers dropped a new build of Winamp.
This version, referred to as Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999, is stated to be the culmination of 4 years of development. Some points of improvement of this software include better compatibility with Windows 11 and VP8 playback.
While the experience to listening to music has certainly changed since the peak of the downloading era when Winamp reined supreme over most software, there are still a large number of people who prefer to listen to music through files such as MP3, myself and our guido boss included.
However, the update could be a matter of too little too late. While it’s nice to have something that brings name recognition, and an update to software that many probably still used in its outdated form to this day – how people listened to music isn’t the only things that’s changed.
Many other audio players have since been released since even the last proper update of Winamp. Software that’s both free and open source that brings about new features that Winamp just hasn’t caught onto.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with something that’s more simple in its music listening experience. In fact, there are likely to be a large group of people that prefer things that way. Only time will tell how much more support Winamp will receive, from both developers and people listening with it.