Tuesday 10 April 2012

Winamp



Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL.

Winamp supports music playback using MP3, MIDI, MOD, MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV and WMA.

Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video and Nullsoft Streaming Video.

At installation, Winamp scans the user's system for media files to add to the Media Library database.

Winamp has extendable support for portable media players and Mass Storage Compliant devices, Microsoft PlaysForSure and ActiveSync, and syncs unprotected music to the iPod.


Winamp Media Monitor allows web-based browsing and bookmarking music blog websites and automatically offering for streaming or downloading all MP3 files there.

Winamp Remote allows remote playback (streaming) of unprotected media files on the user's PC via the Internet.

The Winamp software development kit (SDK) allows software developers to create seven different types of plug-ins.

Plug-in development support increased Winamp's flexibility for, for example, a plethora of specialized plug-ins for game console music files such as NSF, USF, GBS, GSF, SID, VGM, SPC, PSF and PSF2.


Winamp published documentation on skin creation in 1998 with the release of Winamp 2, and invited Winamp users to publish skins on Winamp.com.

The ability to use skins contributed to Winamp's popularity early in MP3 development.

Winamp 5 supports two types of skins — "classic" skins designed to Winamp 2 specifications (static collections of bitmap images), and more flexible, freeform "modern" skins per the Winamp 3 specification.

Frankel formally founded Nullsoft Inc. in January 1998 and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware.


Version 1.90, released March 31, 1998 was the first release as a general-purpose audio player, and documented on the Winamp website as supporting plugins, of which it included two input plugins (MOD and MP3) and a visualization plugin.

Winamp 2.10, released March 24, 1999 included a new version of the "Llama" demo.mp3

Nullsoft relaunched the Winamp-specific winamp.com in December 1999 to provide easier access to skins, plug-ins, streaming audio, song downloads, forums and developer resources.

The next major Winamp version, Winamp3 (so spelled to include mp3 in the name and to mark its separation from the Winamp 2 codebase), was released on August 9, 2002.


Winamp3 had no backward compatibility with Winamp 2 skins and plugins, and the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported.

In response to users reverting to Winamp 2, Nullsoft continued the development of Winamp 2 to versions 2.9 and 2.91 in 2003, even alluding to it humorously.

The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5. Nullsoft joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" ('4 skin' being a pun on foreskin).

Winamp 5 was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, with several Winamp3 features (e.g.

Winamp 5.5: The 10th Anniversary Edition was released on October 10, 2007, ten years after the first release of Winamp (a beta preview had been released on September 10, 2007).


Released as a beta product in October 2010, the Android version for OS 2.1 includes syncing with Winamp desktop (ver.

Its focus is on syncing the Winamp Library to Winamp for Android and the iTunes Music Library (hence the name, "Winamp Sync for Mac").

The developer's blog states that the Winamp Sync for Mac Beta will pave the way for future Winamp-related development under Mac OS X. Winamp has proved so popular that there have quite a few Linux music programs which function in a similar way and can also use Winamp WSZ skins so that in effect one has a player that looks like Winamp.

One example is an image of Justin Frankel, one of Winamp's original authors, hidden in Winamp's About dialog box.

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