Anyone that had a computer and an interest in music at the tail end of the 90's, early 2000's or just computer nerds who needed a decent media player on their pc, would have most likely used Winamp in the days before itunes, media centres and streaming music from the internet. Unfortunately, it has been officially announced by Winamp's developer's, Nullsoft, that the 15 year old media player is to be discontinued and the site shut down on 20th December.
In 2002 AOL acquired Nullsoft, the small development team behind what was probably the most succesful media player at the time. As with most companies who think they can make a quick buck off something popular, AOL screwed up the direction and development of the player, placing restrictions on the developers and software alike. The inclusion of bloatware (forced by AOL) and the slow progression of any further development meant that its userbase went into decline and it would soon be overtaken by other players and media management tools, and then by the advancement of streaming media from the internet.
Slowly, the developers got back at the reins and eventually version 5 would still be slowly improved and lose most of the unwanted crap. Looking back, it would now seem that this may have been too little too late, but at its core, Winamp remains a simple but configurable, unobtrusive, damn fine media player that does exactly what is expected of it. The core functionality and easy user interface has clearly gone on to influence other more recent players (xion and aimp anybody?)
Even though Winamp's userbase in its native USA seems low in comparison to current alternatives, there is still huge support for the player in the rest of the world, making it still rank as one of the top media players for the pc (and our media player of choice). There is a petition to turn Winamp into open source software in order to be kept alive by the Winamp and general development community, but if you are a fan old or new, or in the unlikely event that you've never heard of Winamp, make sure you head over to winamp.com to grab your free copy of internet music history before its gone for good...
