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Nullsoft, Winamp dies


method77

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The last members of the original Winamp team have said goodbye to AOL and the door has all but shut on the Nullsoft era, BetaNews has learned.

Only a few employees remain to prop up the once-ubiquitous digital audio player with minor updates, but no further improvements to Winamp are expected.

Winamp's abandonment comes as no surprise to those close to the company who say the software has been on life support since the resignation of Nullsoft founder and Winamp creator Justin Frankel last January.

The marriage of Nullsoft and AOL was always one of discontent. After AOL acquired the small company in 1999 for around $100 million, the young team of Winamp developers was assimilated into a strict corporate culture that begged for rebellion. Although Nullsoft was initially given a long leash by AOL, It wasn't long until the two ideologies collided.

Frankel and his team were accustomed to simply brainstorming ideas over coffee and bringing them to the masses without approval. So when Frankel and fellow Nullsoft developer Tom Pepper devised a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing system, dubbed Gnutella, parent AOL was left in the dark.

Gnutella was unveiled in March 2000, much to the chagrin of an unprepared AOL; executives feared the program would encourage copyright infringement and damage the company's pending merger with Time Warner. AOL quickly clamped down on Gnutella, but not before the software's source code leaked. Gnutella-based alternatives soon followed, igniting a peer-to-peer land grab that has yet to subside.

But AOL knew it had to protect its investment and turn a profit from the freely available Winamp. Frankel and crew found themselves in hot water numerous times, but always escaped with little more than a proverbial slap on the wrist.

However, growing displeasure reached a boiling point with Nullsoft’s unsanctioned release of WASTE -- an encrypted file-sharing network -- in June 2003. Frankel threatened to resign after AOL removed WASTE, but remained with the company long enough to finish Winamp 5.0.

Frankel's departure followed AOL layoffs and the closure of Nullsoft's San Francisco offices in December 2003.

With AOL struggling to stave off declining subscriber numbers and 700 additional layoffs planned for next month, the company’s focus has shifted away from supporting acquisitions such as Winamp.

Despite the somber farewell, Nullsoft's former masterminds are proud of their accomplishments. Winamp helped start a digital audio revolution and boasts an incredible 60 million users per month.

After a disappointing Winamp3, Nullsoft developers returned to the drawing board and completed long-standing goals with the release of Winamp 5.0 in late 2003.

Nullsoft's Shoutcast, which pioneered audio streaming over the Internet, is called "the Net's best secret" by its creator Tom Pepper and has reached 170,000 simultaneous users accounting for 70 million hours of listening each month.

For its part, AOL says it remains committed to Winamp, stating it is "a thriving product that AOL continues to support and will continue to support."

But without those who poured their heart and soul into building the software, Winamp seems destined to meet a fate similar to fellow audio player Sonique, after Lycos saw the departure of its development team. Sonique has stagnated for years, and development ceased altogether last March.

BetaNews

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:(

sad indeed..........my fav was winamp v2.74 lite..only 400k and it sounded really good..i never really was happy with winamp after they started 3.0 and i never thought that 5.0 was that shit-hot either.....i mainly use bsplayer now...dynamite!!

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Edited by kiwibank
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I've been really disappointed in winamp as of late...what other cool alternative media players to people recom. or use

I've tried to switch to Itunes but I already have my stuff organized my way

i like bsplayer and believe it or not i use musicmatch 7.5 Pro quite a bit, and it sounds good with a few extra codecs thrown in for good measure... i like to play around with the built - in burner and the mp3 ripper in it is cool too....has anyone tried mercury audio player..a few bugs and glitches but not too bad overall.......ultraplayer is another one i use although it isn`t supported any more..it`s still quite a cool old media player..a bit retro but some of the old stuff is still fun and sometimes far better than the new stuff....

http://ultraplayer.com/

http://www.mercuryaudio.net/

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Edited by kiwibank
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I'll go ahead and get this out of the way: No we weren't axed. We haven't even seen anyone with an axe. There was this one guy who came up to us to axe us a question, but that's about it. Much like Tupac Shakur and/or Jesus Christ, our deaths have been greatly exaggerated.

We're going to chalk this one off to one to a poorly-worded and vague news piece that got out of hand (No offense to Nate.). While yes, our team might be a bit lean at the moment, we aren't the starved, skeleton-thin relics we've been rumored to be. It reminds me of that time in grade school when I was sent to the Principal's office for talking too much in class. By the end of the school day, the whole class was abuzz with scandalous reports that I'd not only been expelled, but was also arrested for drug possesion and made an honorary G-Unit member as well.

Seeing everyone talking about our supposed demise was very interesting—if felt like we were attending our own funerals. While it was frustrating to know that so many people had the wrong idea about what was going on, hearing their kind eulogies gave us an unexpected ego boost. I'd like to leave you with some of the praises that you guys left us when you thought we were.. Um. Leaving. Thanks to everyone who came out to show their support for us and who defended us when everyone was calling us gay.

http://www.winamp.com/about/article.php?ai...27&article_pg=1

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