Winamp to close

[#1]

just found out that winamp is ceasing on the 20th December.
A message on the home page is:

Quote

Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.

[#2]

The software really does seem old now. I've used all types of players on my PC, but each time reverted back to Media Monkey.

[#3]

I've used WinAmp for around 14 years just for listening on PC and it does what I need. I never bother with playlists but I do have random play selected. Don't want any other functions (yet) so I'll stick with it. Last upgrade I did was back in summer of 2012 so just grabbed the latest and will stick with that.

[#4]

Microsoft are reportedly in talks to buy Winamp (and shoutcast) though no idea why or what they would do with it.

[#5]

I feel a little sad to hear that news, I've spent many an hour listening to music with Winamp over the years, as well as using some really well written plugins for ripping mixing id3 tagging and removal.  
Best player i ever had the pleasure of using in all honesty, i do mean for for freedom and diversity that is. I first started using winamp on the one and only ever branded PC i bought which was a 166mhz pentium IBM-Aptiva. I think the soundcard was a soundblaster 16 if memory serves me correctly. Or did i have a conflict when i tried to put my new soundblaster16 in and had to take it to the local  PC Guy.
hmmm who knows, the memory plays tricks

[#6]

I can't say that I've used it for several years (got suckered into the world of iTunes thanks to the iPod) but back in 1998/99 a lot of my music was through WinAMP 2, Pentium 133, Windows 95 OSR2 and a SoundBlaster Live! Value (before that, Aztech AZT2320).
WinAMP worked great on the P133 - just fast enough for playing back those new-fangled MP3 files, whilst browsing for around an hour at a time on a dial-up modem with ic24.
It was a great piece of software in its day.

[#7]

I used to thnk winamp was the dogs but the last time I used it must have been 8 or so years ago. It was getting a bit bloaded (like most software) and taking a lot longer to load up thanthe v2 versions and I got frustrated with it. In the end windows media player seemed to be a reliable alternative though I do miss many of the winamp features.
I shall be downloading WA in a jiffy before it goes forever..

[#8]

Sad to see it go, but as others have said, not used it in years, I use Media Player Classic these days for both Video and my Audio needs.

[#9]

I use Winamp because it plays things better than Windows Media Player. Difficult to say what the difference is but it sounds "crisper" and doesn't sound as if it's coming out of two speaker boxes on the desk.

[#10]

Well I finally downloaded it today and i took the lite version for the netbook while i was at it 

[#11]

I hope the llama finds a nice new home after being abused so much over the years. 

[#12]

LOL!
Yeah it'll be sad that it gets shut down but to be honest, WMP became pretty decent - enough that you could use it to play things so I reckon WAs share of users must have dropped. Although WA is much better.. I'm using it right now and i forgot just how much better it really is.
I wonder what will happen to the online services in the media player?

[#13]

Ah, winamp and ess.tv - I miss those days. $5 a month for all the streaming episodes you could want - south park, simpsons, family guy, malcolm in the middle... shame they got shut down (though not entirely surprising).
Did miss winamp and the skins, but as others have said it definitely did get bloated - think that started happening when AOL bought them. These days it's either subsonic (brilliant program) or foobar2000 for listening to music.

[#14]

Yeah the bloating did start with AOL. They basically wanted to turn it into an AOL media player but they failed to realise just how unpopular they were and that was winamps undoing.
I've never liked v5 for reliability but it does have excellent features. The video playback however is incredibly pathetic for large screen size videos - the sound plays normally but the video itself plays at a fraction of the pace and they never seemed to fix it.
V2 and V3 were rock solid for reliability.

[#15]

Strange but since downloading version v5.66 I have had a few problems with the balance shifting around between left and right and audio sounding distorted through headphones.
I'm assuming this would be noticed through speakers, too, but not been able to check that yet.
Pausing WinAmp and playing using WMP shows none of the issues mentioned.
Just looked to see if there is a new version before they close today and notice it is 5.666 - er, no thanks
Will probably revert to the version I was using up until the last week in November.