| Winamp |
Website Links For Winamp |
Information AboutWinamp |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT WINAMP | |
| freeware | |
| streaming software | |
| windows media players | |
| windows-only software | |
| windows cd ripping software | |
| windows cd---dvd writing software | |
Winamp is a Proprietary Media Player written by Nullsoft , now a subsidiary of Time Warner . It is Skin nable, multi-format Freeware / Shareware . Winamp was first released by Justin Frankel in 1996. Current Winamp development is credited to Ben Allison (benski), Will Fisher , Taber Buhl, Maksim Tyrtyshny, Chris Edwards and Stephen (Tag) Loomis. In 2005 Winamp grew from 33 million monthly users to over 57 million monthly users,2 making it the second most actively used media player globally, second only to Windows Media Player . HISTORY WinAMP The minimalist WinAMP 0.20a was released as freeware on April 21 1997 .April 21, 1997 release date extracted from Winamp.exe 0.20a binary. This version still plays some constant-bit-rate MP3s on Windows XP SP2, but can crash when paused/unpaused. Its windowless menubar-only interface showed only play(open), stop, pause, and unpause functions. A file specified on the command line or dropped onto its icon would be played. MP3 decoding was performed by the "free for non-commercial use"License info from Winamp 1.006 Help menu. AMP® decoding engine, ©1996-97 by Tomislav Uzelac, at the time a student at FER , University Of Zagreb , Croatia . The acronym "AMP" stood for "Advanced Multimedia Products". Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev integrated this engine with their user interface. WinAMP 0.92 was released as freeware in May 1997. Within the standard Windows frame and menubar, it had the beginnings of the "classic" Winamp GUI: dark gray rectangle with silver 3D-effect transport buttons, a red/green volume slider, time displayed in a green LED font, with trackname, MP3 bitrate and "mixrate" in green. There was no position bar, and a blank space where the spectrum analyzer and waveform analyzer would later appear. Multiple files on the command line or dropped onto its icon were enqueued in the playlist. Winamp 1 > Version 1.006 was released June 7 , 1997 Version 1.006 release date from help screen, version from executable binary. renamed "Win''amp''"(lower case). It showed a spectrum analyzer, and color changing volume slider, but no waveform display. The AMP non-commercial license was included in its Help Menu . According to Tomislav Uzelac, Frankel licensed the AMP 0.7 engine , Inc. in January 1998, and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware.3 In March, Uzelac's newly founded company, PlayMedia Systems {Link without Title} sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nullsoft, claiming unlawful use of AMP. Nullsoft responded that they had replaced AMP with Nitrane, Nullsoft's proprietary decoder, but Playmedia disputed this. Version 1.90, released March 31 , 1998 was the first release as a general-purpose audio player, and documented on the winamp.com website as supporting plugins, of which it included two input plugins (''MOD'' and ''MP3'') and a visualization plugin.4 via archive.org The installer for Version 1.91, released 18 days later, included ''wave'', ''cdda'', and ''Windows tray handling'' plugins, as well as the famous DEMO.MP3 file ''"Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass"''.DEMO.MP3 15592 bytes, 32 kbit/s, 22 kHz, recorded in "1997" "Exclusively for Nullsoft" by JJ McKay . Voice only, no music stinger. Winamp 2 Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8 , 1998 . The 2.x versions became widely used, and Winamp was one of the most Download ed pieces of Software for Microsoft Windows .5 The new version improved the usability of the playlist, made the equalizer more accurate, introduced more plug-ins and allowed 'skins' for the playlist and equalizer windows. PlayMedia Systems filed a federal lawsuit against Nullsoft in March 1999. In June, Nullsoft was bought by AOL for $80 million.6 from archive.org. PlayMedia was granted an Injunction on Nullsoft distributing Nitrane, and the same month the lawsuit was settled with out-of-court licensing and confidentiality agreements. Soon after, Nullsoft switched to an ISO decoder from the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft , the developers of the MP3 format. Winamp 2.10, released March 24 , 1999 included a new version of the "Llama" ''demo.mp3'' featuring a musical Sting and Bleating . 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. As of June 22 , 2000 Winamp surpassed 25 million registrants. Winamp3 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 . It was a complete rewrite of version 2, newly based on the Wasabi application framework, which offered additional functionality and flexibility. Winamp3 was developed parallel to Winamp 2, but many users found it consumed too many system resources and was unstable (or even lacked some valued functionality, such as the ability to count or find the total duration of Track s in a Playlist ). Winamp3 had no Backward Compatibility with Winamp 2 skins and plugins, and the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported. No Winamp3 version of SHOUTcast was ever released. Many Winamp3 users reverted to Winamp 2. Nullsoft responded by continuing development of Winamp 2 to versions 2.9 and 2.91. The beta versions 2.92 and 2.95 were released with the inclusion of some upcoming Winamp 5 functionality. During this period the Wasabi ''cross-platform'' Application framework and Skinnable GUI toolkit was derived from parts of the Winamp3 source code. For Linux , Nullsoft released an alpha version of Winamp3 October 9 , 2001 but has not updated it despite continued user interest. Winamp 5 The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5 — Nullsoft justified their non-sequential christening by quipping that 2 + 3 = 5 — taking the best parts from both applications. Developers also 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. modern skins) incorporated. Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003. Most of the Wasabi framework built for creating Winamp3 and its components was released as Open Source , and As Of 2005 an active development effort has succeeded in making a standalone version of Wasabi, minus the skinning and scripting modules which were never released. Winamp 5 comes in three versions. Lite and Full are freeware, and Pro requires registration and (as of early 2007) sells for US$ 19.95. The Lite version has far less functionality (largely supplementable with plugins) while still replicating most of Winamp 2's feature set in a far smaller installer. The Full version offers a richer feature set, including music Ripping and CD burning at limited speeds (6x for ripping and 2x for burning). The Pro version features unlimited speed music ripping and CD burning and MP3 encoding. CONCEPTS Skins . The size of the development community has led to the inclusion of Winamp skin support in other digital media software such as Windows Media Player and XMMS . Plug-ins The Winamp software development kit allows software developers to extend Winamp's functionality through the use of plug-ins, which are categorized into the following seven types:
Easy development of specialized Input plug-ins contributed to Winamp's versatility compared to monolithic media players. For example, popular Video Game Music has driven development of plugins to playback game Console music files, such as NSF , USF , GBS , GSF , SID , GYM , SPC , PSF And PSF2 . A wide variety of plug-ins are available on the Winamp web site. Winamp.com Plugins FEATURES The following are features of Winamp 5:
DERIVATIVE WORK
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