Winamp is a
proprietary media player written by
Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of
AOL. It is
skinnable, multi-format
freeware/
shareware.
Winamp was first released by
Justin Frankel in 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.] Current Winamp development is credited to Ben Allison (Benski) and Maksim Tyrtyshny. Winamp grew from 33 million users in February 2005 to over 57 million users in September 2006.
Features
Playback formats
Besides
MP3, Winamp supports a wide variety of contemporary and specialized music file formats, including
MIDI,
MOD,
MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2,
AAC,
M4A,
FLAC,
WAV and
WMA. Winamp was one of the first common music players on Windows to support playback of
Ogg Vorbis by default. It supports
gapless playback for MP3 and AAC, and
Replay Gain for volume leveling across tracks. In addition, Winamp can play and
import music from
audio CDs, optionally with
CD-Text, and can also
burn music to CDs. It should be noted that it is necessary to buy the "Pro" version to be able to rip or burn discs at maximum speeds.
Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video and
Nullsoft Streaming Video. For MPEG Video, AVI and other unsupported video types, Winamp uses Microsoft's
DirectShow API for playback, allowing playback of most of the video formats supported by
Windows Media Player. 5.1
Surround sound is supported where formats and decoders allow.
Media library
Winamp's media library supports full
Unicode filenames and Unicode
metadata for media files. The Winamp media Library files are located in the %AppData% folder for each user. This allows for each user to have one media library and no more. The specific folder for this is
%AppData%\Winamp\Plugins\ml.
In Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP, the %AppData% folder is typically found in
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Settings\.
In Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7, the %AppData% folder is typically found in
c:\users\\AppData\Roaming\.
Podcatcher
Winamp can also be used as an
RSS media feeds
aggregator capable of displaying
articles, downloading or playing that same content as
streaming media.
SHOUTcast Wire provides a directory and RSS subscription system for
podcasts.
Online services
A Winamp online service is a web page, or web-based feature, embedded inside the Winamp software which interacts with the application to create an enhanced user experience. In order to use an online service users are required to have an internet connection and Winamp version 5.55 (or higher). Users and Developers can create their own services by leveraging the Winamp Online Services API to create expanded features and functionality.
Some existing services include, OurStage Radio, Songbook Lyrics and
Spinner's MP3 of the Day. Free access to
Internet radio services like
SHOUTcast Radio,
CBS Radio and
AOL Radio (
Genre stations), and
Internet television like SHOUTcast TV. It can also access the
Singingfish audio/video search engine.
The Winamp Developer Network is an official Winamp site designed to help facilitate community development by providing information and technical documentation on how to create and publish Skins, Plugins, & Online Services.
Media player device support
Winamp has extendable support for
portable media players. Device plugins are currently included for
iPods and
Creative NOMADs,
Mass Storage Compliant devices, and devices that support the
Microsoft PlaysForSure and
ActiveSync technologies, such as those running
Windows Mobile.
In more recent versions of Winamp, an extension has been added to allow users to share their media libraries to their gaming consoles on the same network through Winamp Remote. This was created through a partnership with Orb. The same extension allows users to access their media libraries anywhere via internet connections.
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:
- Input plug-ins decode media data contained in specific file formats.
- Output plug-ins control the destination of decoded audio (such as the DirectSound device or direct-to-file writing).
- DSP/Effect plug-ins manipulate audio (reverb, spacialization, equalization with preamp, compression, etc).
- General Purpose plug-ins add functionality or extensions to Winamp (Media Library, alarm clock, or pause when logged out).
- Media Library plug-ins add functionality or extensions to the Media Library plug-in (gen_ml, included with Winamp).
- Device plug-ins add support of portable media players to the Portable Media Player plug-in (ml_pmp, included with Winamp)
Input plug-ins allow Winamp to play additional media formats. 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 plug-ins to play back game
console music files, such as
NSF,
USF,
GBS,
GSF,
SID,
VGM,
SPC,
PSF and PSF2.
Output plug-ins enable features such as
sound effects (via
DSP plugins) and visual effects (notably
Advanced Visualization Studio, or AVS, and
MilkDrop).
Other plug-ins included in the installer bundle activate features such as global
hotkeys. Users can enable these plug-ins by selecting them during installation (a feature made possible by Winamp's use of
NSIS to package the application).
A wide variety of plug-ins are available on the Winamp web site.
Skins
Alexandru Popa's "EVO", a "classic" winamp skin
Mischa Klement's "Template Amp 1.1", a template created to guide Winamp skinners
are aesthetic revisions of the Winamp
graphical user interface (GUI). Winamp has published documentation on skin creation, and invites contributors to publish skins on Winamp.com. As a result, freely available Winamp skins now number in the thousands.
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. Modern skins support true
alpha channel transparency,
scripting control, a docked toolbar, and other innovations to the user interface, but many skins found on Winamp.com remain committed to the "classic" skin specification. Online communities of skin designers, such as 1001 Winamp Skins and
DeviantArt, and the active forums on Winamp.com, attest to the popularity of the feature and its flexibility as a medium for creative expression. As the number of independently produced works has increased,
genres or categories of skins have emerged. Promoting celebrities, fashion models, films, cars, bands, brands, and other forms of entertainment remains a common staple of the medium. Artists have also created designs for their own sake — parodies of other interfaces, nostalgic emulations of old hardware and operating systems, hand drawn art, 3-dimension renderings employing transparencies, minimalist and high contrast designs, and clever implementations of
vector graphics.
The default (classic) skin of Winamp was designed by Nullsoft employee Steve Gedikian.
History
Initial releases
The minimalist WinAMP 0.20a was released as freeware on 21 April 1997.
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 AMP decoding engine by
Tomislav Uzelac, which was free for non-commercial use. 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 a 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
Winamp 1
Version 1.006 was released June 7, 1997 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 June 1, 1997
[ Playmedia website. Retrieved 2007-04-01.] Frankel formally founded
Nullsoft, Inc. in January 1998, and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware. In March, Uzelac's newly founded company, 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.
The installer for Version 1.91, released 18 days later, included
wave,
cdda, and
Windows tray handling plugins, as well as the famous
Wesley Willis-inspired DEMO.MP3 file
"Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass".
Winamp 2
Winamp 2, shown with default Base Skin
Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most
downloaded pieces of
software for
Microsoft Windows. 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. PlayMedia was granted an
injunction against distribution of Nitrane by Nullsoft, 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 was bought by
AOL in June 1999 for US$80 million.
[ from archive.org.]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.
Winamp 3
Winamp3
In response to users reverting to Winamp 2, Nullsoft continued the 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 of the functionality of the upcoming Winamp 5. 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 in October 9, 2001 but has not updated it despite continued user interest.Winamp 5
Winamp 5 featuring Winamp Modern skin
Winamp 5 comes in three versions. Lite and Full are freeware, and Pro requires registration and 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 (although the installer for Winamp Lite 5.5.6 at 6899 kB is almost 3 times as large as for Winamp 2.92 at 2389 kB). 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.
Winamp 5 in Aero Preview
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.) New features to the player included album art support, much improved localization support (with several official, localized Winamp releases, including German, Polish, Russian and French), and a unified player and media library interface skin. This version also dropped support for Windows 9x.
Version 5.5 displays the classic Winamp 2 interface when the Windows Aero taskbar preview is seen, instead of displaying the original window contents, as other programs do. There is a workaround, but it works only when Winamp is not minimized.Easter eggs
Winamp has always included a number of Easter eggs, hidden features that are accessible via undocumented operations.
Here are four examples of Easter eggs included in Winamp 5. The first requires the modern skin, while the last requires Bento.
- Overlaying the beat analyzer with two llamas that bang heads to the beats:
With the default (Modern) skin chosen, stretch the main window until the Beat Analyzer appears; it says "BEAT" under it. Hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift and click exactly at the center of the Beat Analyzer, then play a song with fast beats and loud bass.
- Changing the opacity of Winamp with the beats:
Type "nullsoft" in the main window. Because the hotkey "L" will bring up the "open" dialog, it is important to close this before continuing. You will essentially be typing "n-u-l-(escape key)-l-(escape key)-s-o-f-t". This must also be typed in lowercase, (nullsoft) and not uppercase (NULLSOFT). Play a song with beats and loud bass to enjoy the effect.
With the default Base Skin enabled, doing this would toggle the top bar text between WINAMP and "IT REALLY WHIPS THE LLAMA'S ASS!"
Shift+double click the video in the About dialog to show the dashboard.
Ctrl+double click the video in the About dialog to bring up "DJ Egg".
With Bento/Big Bento set as the skin, go to Preferences -> Skins -> Modern Skins -> Current Skins and double click the box for a game.
Derivative works
Dosamp
- Unagi is the codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp core technologies as distributed with the AOL software or as an ActiveX download. It powers many AOL media projects, e.g., video@netscape, video@aol, AOL Radio, media playback within AIM.
[File listings extracted from installation path and binaries.]
- The AIMTunes feature included with AIM 6.5 was implemented with components and code from Winamp.
- XMMS is a player for Unix-like systems (Linux and Unix), which has a user interface that is extraordinarily similar to the Winamp 2 interface. In fact, it can use unmodified Winamp 2 skins. A couple of other media players, Beep Media Player and Audacious, are based on XMMS.
Historical work
Dosamp was a software audio MP3 player made by Nullsoft for DOS operating systems. The project was dropped in favor of WinAMP. Dosamp was closed source, but released as freeware.
MacAmp was an early GUI-based MP3 audio player for Mac OS. It was first released on April 13, 1997 by Dmitry Boldyrev and later by Subband Software. Its MP3 decoding capability was based on the PlayMedia Systems AMP MPEG-2, Layers 1, 2 and 3 decoder.See also
