Winamp can’t bring herself to fade into the mists of the past: July 29 is out a new version of this emblematic audio player of the late 1990s. At the time, this software launched in 1997 was the most popular among music lovers who wanted to play their MP3 songs, either downloaded from the Internet more or less legally, or made using a CD as a source. Users could freely customize the look of the player with skins, dressing the interface in an aesthetic or exuberant way. They could also watch the music come to life in a graphical way, thanks to the famous visualizations, which contributed to the popularity of this free software.
For all these reasons, Winamp retains a nostalgic love rating among thirties and forties, even if its outdated interface has slowly pushed some of its fans towards other audio players, while others have migrated to services online music platforms, such as Deezer or Spotify, adopting new ways of consuming music.
Whatever, the Winamp development team has resumed service and put a new version of the software online, nine years later. the latest stable versionwhich remains downloadable today, and four years after the publication of a unfinished version following a leak.
Invisible improvements
The developers of the new Winamp explain on a forum have essentially modernized the software code, an invisible modification which required them four years of work and which will allow them to start other projects in the years to come, such as the introduction of new audio formats in the engine reader, such as OGV or H265.
The project page however, reports small malfunctions and incompatibilities that affect the new Winamp. Two antivirus detect in particular several malicious softwareand even if it is an erroneous analysis, according to the developers of Winampthese uncertainties encourage us to wait a bit before giving this mythical reader a chance.