Winamp
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Winamp's revival includes platforms for musicians and fans
Winamp isn't content to just offer an MP3 player — it's launching a creator platform that includes a space for fans.
Winamp, your parents' favorite MP3 software, is back
Winamp has been updated after four years —the MP3 software of your younger days has returned.
Winamp plans a streaming-friendly revival in 2019
Winamp, a relic from the Wild West days of digital music, not only still exists but has a major update on the way for next year. Parent company Radionomy is planning to reboot the service as an all-in-one app that pulls podcasts, playlists, streaming radio stations—basically any sound you can fill your ears with—into a single platform. According to TechCrunch, the update is due out in 2019.
Plex’s incubator launches a Winamp-inspired music player
Plex's comprehensive media server, complete with live TV and all-round entertainment playback, is a big draw for cord cutters. But, it seems the company is itching to unleash even more products. To that end, it just unveiled Plex Labs, a new incubator that promises to deliver internal passion projects and give shout-outs to work from its community (as long as it's not piracy related, of course). The incubator's first product is Plexamp: a desktop music player that crams tons of features into its tiny, Winamp-inspired, package. If you already use Plex for music, then you'll probably want to check out the free player, which works on macOS and Windows.
Recommended Reading: Rebooting a hero in 'Spider-Man: Homecoming'
'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Is One of the Best Superhero Movies in Years Christopher Orr, The Atlantic Well folks, the time has come. The team-up between Sony and Marvel for the third different take on Spider-Man debuted this week. So far, the reviews are mostly positive, noting that the duo created a compelling story line for Peter Parker with Tom Holland that establishes the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Don't take my word for it, The Atlantic has a full review (yep, spoilers) with all the details.
Radionomy acquires Winamp and Shoutcast to boost its streaming efforts
There were rumors that Winamp would find a rescuer following its shutdown, and today that rescue is official. Online radio platform provider Radionomy has acquired both WinAmp and Shoutcast from AOL (Engadget's owner) for an undisclosed amount. The deal is primarily a play for market share; now that Radionomy owns Shoutcast, it's powering roughly half of all internet radio. The company also plans to improve Winamp, making it "ubiquitous" across multiple platforms that include mobile devices and car infotainment systems. It's doubtful that Winamp will reclaim the prominence it had during its heyday, but the acquisition should at least give it (and Shoutcast) a new lease on life. [Image credit: Theis Kofoed Hjorth, Flickr]
Relive Winamp's glory days with a retro Spotify music app
Winamp may be riding into the sunset today, but that doesn't mean you'll have to go without its classic interface in the future. Ludde is paying tribute to the jukebox software by releasing Spotiamp, a tiny Windows app that streams your Spotify playlists with Winamp's 1990s-era flair. The connection to the AOL-owned player isn't just skin-deep, though -- Spotiamp includes its own Shoutcast server, so you can send tunes to a Sonos speaker or anything else with native Shoutcast support. As long as you have a Spotify Premium subscription, you can take a musical trip down memory lane through the source link.
Winamp, the media player of your college years, is shutting down next month
Winamp, the AOL-owned mp3 player of yore, will close up shop for good on December 20th, which means you have exactly one month from today to use the service -- if you're still using it, that is. In addition to shutting down Winamp.com, AOL and co. will no longer offer downloads of the media player. It's hardly a surprising announcement, but it's a slightly glum one considering Winamp's popularity in the late nineties and early aughts. Go ahead, you have our permission to get nostalgic for a moment or two.
Winamp comes to Android, one of our childhood dreams is realized
Here's a blast from the past: Winamp, that mainstay media player of college dorms and LAN parties since time immemorial (er, 1997 or so) has made the leap from PC to handset with the release of Winamp for Android. This bad boy is available for Android 2.1 and up, and features a playback widget for the Android desktop and Last.fm integration. But that ain't all! If you install Winamp 5.59 beta on your PC, you can sync and manage your libraries via USB or WiFI. Pretty sweet! We only have one questions, really: will it still whip the llama's ass? Check out the QR code after the break (or search the Android Market) for the mobile app. Winamp 5.59 beta is available in the Winamp forums (More Coverage link, below). [Thanks, Samat]
A walk through iTunes history
Recognize the software above? The brushed steel, the rounded buttons, the liquid digital-style display. If you said SoundJam, you're right. But if you said iTunes, you're right, too -- SoundJam is the app that Apple originally bought to turn into the multimedia/handheld software juggernaut we know today. This is the first (public) iteration of the software, as told in this interesting history of iTunes over at Mac|Life. The program actually started as a Winamp-style (oh man, remember Winamp? Justin Frankel's now doing stuff with Reaper, which is the app artists will use to release their songs in Rock Band. But I digress...) media management application, and it's really interesting to see how it turned into a real keystone of Apple's media plans over the years, from the "Rip. Mix. Burn." idea to the home base for the iPhone, up into the current iTMS (complete with music, movies, TV shows and even audiobooks) and of course the game-changing App Store. If you'd told the SoundJam guys that their software would one day revolutionize the music and smartphone industries, not to mention be at the center of a multimillion dollar software delivery system, they'd probably have told you to keep dreaming. And we're only at version 9. Who knows what we'll see in the next ten years of iTunes?
Player vs Radio: the volume is fading
DJ Krelo is one of the owners of Player vs Radio, and she handles both the administrative end and personnel support. Even though NCsoft's CoX Meet & Greet was fairly high-energy, she was kind enough to take some time out of her event coverage to give us an interview about PvR, its history, and what it's looking forward to in the future.PvR is a cross-MMO station -- meaning that they don't limit themselves to the City of Heroes and City of Villains properties, but broadcast within a wide range of MMO titles such as Vanguard, World of Warcraft, and Second Life -- and their music rotation is based on player requests. DJ Krelo herself is focused on Gothic, Industrial, Trance, Techno, and Synth-Pop, but every DJ has their own range of music they play. DJ Krelo has been broadcasting for almost two years -- starting with a former station, and moving to PvR after they opened a little over a year ago -- while PvR itself has been broadcasting continuously since they started, save for a brief hiatus during the RIAA royalties debacle.
Winamp streams to the Wii
Many may profess that iTunes is the ultimate application for listening to music on the PC. For us, Winamp has always been (and probably always will be) where it's at. And, we're quite happy to report that Winamp now works with the Wii.Users then can do a little thing here or there, point their Wii's web browser to here and stream music directly from their internet-enabled PC. You can also allow other users to stream content from your PC set up on the Wii, allowing them to check out video and music from your host machine.Technology, ain't she grand?
6th Gen iPods won't work with Linux, Winamp
There's no such thing as a 'naked iPod' -- at some point, if the iPod is going to be useful, it has to be paired with a computer to have music loaded (or, as noted in the comments, you'll be spending a LOT at the WiFi iTunes Store). Despite appearances, the set of iPod owners does not map exactly to the set of iTunes users; there are folks who prefer to manage their iPods via Winamp, Anapod or Ephpod on the Windows platform, and for Linux users (with no iTunes version at all) there are open-source apps and libraries like gtkpod/libgpod (libgpod is also the engine behind Senuti, the freeware reverse-iTunes tool). All of these utilities depend on an understanding of the iTunesDB file found on every iPod to be able to read out the list of songs on the device and manage them independently.The landscape appears to have changed, however, with the release of the new iPods. According to a post on the iPodMinusiTunes blog, the iTunesDB file now contains a couple of encrypted hashes that validate the information in the music list; this 'fingerprints' the iPod/iTunes pairing and also prevents third-party apps from modifying the iTunesDB without access to the hash key. Those applications now may show '0 songs' if they try to copy songs to the iPod. Tools like Senuti, which only copy files FROM the iPod, continue to work (verified by Nik and his new Nano).This change has unfortunate implications for those users who depended on the third-party apps to manage their iPods; until and unless the development community cracks the iTunesDB lock, the new gear will be inaccessible to anything but iTunes for management. At this point, we don't know that Apple modified iTunesDB specifically to foil non-iTunes utilities; there may be legitimate technical or infrastructure reasons (WiFi iTunes Store?) to make this change. Still, for the slice of the iPod market that depends on the extra-iTunes management capability, this is going to stifle any plans to upgrade to the latest and greatest until the software can catch up.Thanks, Dave.
Wii remote + iTunes = Waggle Tunes
If we could, we'd cut down on all the remotes we have lying around our family room and operate everything with our Wii Remote -- televisions, DVD players, our downward-spiraling lives, etc. -- but so far, the white wand hasn't been too useful outside of playing video games. Mike Anderson's BlueTunes application adds an extra feature to the remote, allowing you to mess with the controls on media players like iTunes, Winamp, and Windows Media Player. Once you've installed the program on your computer and detected the remote as a bluetooth device, you'll be able to execute a number of playback functions by either pushing the controller's buttons or waving it around.Unfortunately, if you're like us and have a playlist filled with nothing but Bel Biv Devoe's "Poison," using an application like BlueTunes to change tracks wouldn't make much sense. Really, there's no reason why you should ever skip "Poison," unless, of course, you want to listen to more "Poison."[Via DCEmu]
Apple files patent for synchronized lyrics display
If there's one music player feature that never seemed to catch on, it's showing off the lyrics of a given song. The record companies quibbled a little bit about cover art, but now even iTunes will provide you with cover art, and yet lyrics are still confined to ad-laden websites trying to hide from the copyright brigade. Music players gained a little ground earlier this year when Gracenote won the ability to distribute song lyrics, but so far only Yahoo Music has taken them up on the offer (and who uses Yahoo Music anyway, right?).Apple is getting there, though. According to Ars Technica, they've applied for a patent to "dynamically" show text on the screen of a portable media device while the media is playing, specifically synchronized lyrics. They also mention two ways of doing this-- either scrolling the text across the screen (which seems like a strange setup, but might work), and the more standard method of distinguishing one part of the text from another-- in other, less legal words, the bouncing ball technique.Either way, I've never seen a good implementation of showing lyrics in a music player (the last time I messed around with it was a plugin for Winamp however many years ago, and of course in that case you had to get them in there yourself). If anyone can tell you what the hell Björk is supposed to be saying on her latest album, hopefully it's Apple.
Mister Tipster MT425 and MT410 RSS and email tickers
Mister Tipster just loosed two new models into their dedicated RSS ticker lineup including a low-ender. You know, just in case the original Mister Tipster's 4 lines of black-on-green monochrome text was too, erm, swank for your needs. The $150 MT425 "Pro" and $100 MT410 "Basic" (pictured) models each measure 4.5 x 3 x 3-inches and tap into your RSS feeds over USB like the original with new access to POP3 and IMAP4 email and third-party software like Winamp. Still seems like a lot for a little.
Winamp and Orb team up to release Winamp Remote
AOL has launched Winamp Remote as of late last week that hopefully will turn any xHTML-equipped mobile handset (like almost any modern cellphone) into a Internet-controlled remote for a user's Winamp media player on that stationary (or laptop, heh) PC. Running on Orb Network technology, Winamp remote is very similar to Orb's "MyCasting" service. This new service will give cellphone users phone-based access to those hefty MP3 collections sitting on that trust computer hard drive -- all from your cellphone's built-in web browser. Three items are needed: Winamp installed on a PC (where your music collection resides), a cellphone with a built in xHTML web browser and (hopefully unlimited) data plan and the installation of Winamp Remote on the same PC where Winamp is installed. A final question: why wouldn't one just use Orb alone instead of Winamp Remote?
Logitech Z-10 Interactive 2.0 Speaker System comes with Internet radio presets
Speaking of being busy, Logitech's been crankin' out some sweet gear as well. This morning, we came across this new Logitech Z-10 Interactive 2.0 Speaker System. These pair of sweet lookin' speakers come with an embedded woofer that elegantly connects to your machine via a single USB cable. But the real innovation is the preset buttons for Internet radio stations (no word on what flavor), and its ability to act as an external control for your favorite media players, including iTunes, WMP, Winamp and Musicmatch. However, it appears that it doesn't have Foobar support yet, sadly. Each satellite is 9.7 x 4.5 x 4.7 inch, and it's due to hit the streets next month for a Benjamin and a half. [Via Geekzone]
DSamp in action
Above all else, the readers of DS Fanboy will always answer the call, going above and beyond to help out. When we posted about the DS homebrew application DSamp yesterday, we opened our arms, ever-so-lovingly, to allow any of our fine readers willing to record the application in action to send us a video so that we may both inform the readers and make them the most famous person this side of the internet since people heard there were snakes on a plane somewhere. One reader by the name of spadge has answered the call and presented us with this fine video. Your reward shall be a slow tip of the hat and a thanks nestled between two brackets.[Thanks spadge!]
Control Winamp with your DS
The DS is a wonderful machine, capable of interacting with a PC in imaginative ways. Now, the clever homebrew community, has come up with a way for the DS to control Winamp. Should any of you DIY-ers out there wish to film yourself giving this a go, send us a link and like Doc Holliday, we'll make you famous. Now how about someone coming up with a way to stream music or video from Winamp onto the DS?
