According to Tomislav Uzelac, Frankel licensed the AMP 0.7 engine June 1, 1997.[39] Frankel formally founded Nullsoft Inc. in January 1998 and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware.[38] In March, Uzelac's company, Advanced Multimedia Products (which by then had been merged into PlayMedia Systems), 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.[citation needed]
Winamp 1
Version 1.006 was released June 7, 1997[37][38] renamed "Winamp" (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.[39] Frankel formally founded Nullsoft Inc. in January 1998 and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware.[38] In March, Uzelac's company, Advanced Multimedia Products (which by then had been merged into PlayMedia Systems), 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.[citation needed]
Version 1.90, released March 31, 1998 was the first release as a general-purpose audio player, and documented on the Winamp website as supporting plugins, of which it included two input plugins (MOD and MP3) and a visualization plugin.[9] 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".[40][41]
By July 1998, Winamp's various versions had been downloaded over three million times.[38]
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 Windows.[42] 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 filed a federal lawsuit against Nullsoft in March 1999. In May, 1999, PlayMedia was granted an injunction by Federal Judge A. Howard Matz against distribution of Nitrane by Nullsoft, and the same month the lawsuit was settled out-of-court with licensing and confidentiality agreements.[35] 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 in stock.[43][44]
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".[43]
Winamp3
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 tracks in a playlist)".[45][46] 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.
In response to users reverting to Winamp 2, Nullsoft continued the development of Winamp 2 to versions 2.9 and 2.91 in 2003,[47] even alluding to it humorously.[48] 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 on October 9, 2001 but has not updated it despite continued user interest.[49]
Winamp 5
Winamp 5 featuring Winamp Modern skin
The Winamp 2 and Winamp3 branches were later fused into Winamp 5. Nullsoft joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" ('4 skin' being a pun on foreskin).[50] It was also joked that "Winamp 5 is so good they skipped a number" and "Winamp 2+3=5,".[51] 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.
From version 5.2 onwards, support for synchronizing with an iPod is built-in.[52]
Winamp 5.5
Winamp 5.5: The 10th Anniversary Edition was released on October 10, 2007,[53] 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 dropped support for Windows 9x.[5][54]
As of version 5.55, Winamp development is credited to Ben Allison (Benski) and Maksim Tyrtyshny.[55]
Ports and clones
Android
Winamp for Android streaming an Internet radio station over WiFi, on a Samsung Captivate Glide
Released as a beta product in October 2010, the Android version for OS 2.1 includes syncing with Winamp desktop (ver. 5.59 beta+) over USB or WiFi.[1] It was received with some enthusiasm in the consumer blog press.[56][57]
Mac OS
Winamp was rumored to be coming to Mac as far back as 2001, but the software was never released.[citation needed]
In October 2011, Winamp Sync for Mac was introduced as a Beta release. It is the first Winamp version for the Apple Macintosh platform and runs under Mac OS X 10.6 and above. Its focus is on syncing the Winamp Library to Winamp for Android and the iTunes Music Library (hence the name, "Winamp Sync for Mac"). Nonetheless, a full Winamp Library and player features are included. The developer's blog states that the Winamp Sync for Mac Beta will pave the way for future Winamp-related development under Mac OS X.[58]
Clones
Winamp has proved so popular that there have been quite a few Linux music programs which function in a similar way and can also use Winamp WSZ skins so that in effect one has a player that looks like Winamp. Those players are Xmms, Audacious and Qmmp. Qmmp comes natively with projectM, an implementation of MilkDrop.
Easter eggs
Winamp has historically included a number of Easter eggs: hidden features that are accessible via undocumented operations. One example is an image of Justin Frankel, one of Winamp's original authors, hidden in Winamp's About dialog box.[59] The included easter eggs have changed with versions of Winamp, and over thirty have been documented elsewhere.[60]
Derivative works
Unagi is the codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp core technologies. AOL announced in 2004 that Unagi would be incorporated into AOL Media Player (AMP), in development.[61] After beta testing, AMP was discontinued in 2005, but portions lived on in AOL's web-based player.[62]
