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53-514: AOL Radio can trace its roots to two companies it acquired on June 1, 1999, for $ 400 million: Spinner.com and Nullsoft. Spinner.com was formerly known as TheDJ.com. Nullsoft was the maker of the popular Winamp and SHOUTcast products. Both new organizations operated out of the same office in San Francisco . The Spinner.com brand was retired in July 2003. AOL Radio launched as Radio@AOL , essentially

106-487: A music streaming service with plans to integrate with other music platforms such as Spotify and to play local audio files. Another feature of the new platform is Winamp Fanzone, where artists can upload and license their music for commercial use, and listeners can support artists directly by buying perks, such as early access to new songs or NFTs. On May 16, 2024, Llama Group announced that Winamp would be going partially open source on September 24, 2024. The source code

159-639: A client for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch via the App Store offering mobile streaming of all stations though WiFi, EDGE and 3G cellular connections. AOL Radio was also available through the AOL Instant Messenger service, and Winamp . Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft , which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $ 80 million. It

212-427: A green LED font , with track name, MP3 bitrate, and "mixrate" in green. Overlength titles appear as slowly scrolling text (or "marquee"). The skeuomorphic design somewhat resembles shelf stereos . 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. Version 1.006

265-598: A music NFT playback feature. Users are able to add music NFTs on Ethereum and Polygon to the media library by connecting to the Metamask wallet. In April 2023, Winamp 5.9.2 was officially released, which, according to the developers themselves, is a minor update to the previous version. On October 15, 2018, Radionomy's CEO Alexandre Saboundjian announced that a new version of Winamp – then called Winamp 6 – would be released in 2019. The new version launched on April 13, 2023 as an online service. The platform features Winamp Player,

318-499: A music locker service that would essentially compete with other online music lockers . The beta program was cancelled months before the announcement to shut down the Winamp project. On November 20, 2013, AOL announced that it would shut down Winamp.com on December 20, 2013, and the software would no longer be available for download nor supported by the company after that date. The following day, an unofficial report surfaced that Microsoft

371-455: A new default interface skin called "Bento" which unlike the previous skins is a unified player and media library in one window as opposed to a multi-window interface. This version dropped support for Windows 9x . Winamp 5.6 was released in November 2010 and features Android Wi-Fi support and direct mouse wheel support. Fraunhofer AAC codec with VBR encoding support was implemented. Moreover,

424-459: A non-streaming " beamcast " approach to music listening as of late Summer 2008. CBS Radio stations featured on AOL Radio use a variety of streaming methods not limited to Ultravox. This format uses uvox URLs, and can be viewed in Winamp . Nullsoft is reportedly helping AOL create Ultravox. Nullsoft also released Nullsoft Streaming Video , which is streamed through Ultravox software. Michael Wise

477-463: A rebranded Spinner.com, using technology from RealNetworks on October 16, 2001, as part of the AOL 7.0 software announced that same day. In its first month of operation, AOL reported that 2.2 million members accessed Radio@AOL, making it one of AOL's most popular features. Initially, Radio@AOL was available only to AOL members. On May 22, 2002, AOL released the free Radio@Netscape for non-members as part of

530-456: A streaming service that allows users to support artists by buying perks or NFTs . The service launched on the web in April 2023, followed by beta apps for Android and iOS in July 2023. In September 2024, Llama Group partially released the Winamp source code for Windows under a custom source-available license. Plug-in development support increased Winamp's flexibility – for example,

583-503: 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" . Mike the Llama is the company mascot. By July 1998, Winamp's various versions had been downloaded over three million times. Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The new version improved

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636-474: Is built-in. This was developed by Will Fisher, as a re-write of the open source ml_ipod plug-in . Winamp 5.5: The 10th Anniversary Edition was released on October 10, 2007, ten years after the first release of Winamp (a preview version had been released on September 10, 2007). New features to the player included album art support, improved localization support (with several officially localized Winamp releases, including German, Polish, Russian, and French), and

689-620: Is on the ISMA Board of Directors, and is reported as being actively involved in AOL’s streaming technology planning. In an effort to drive interoperability and lower distribution costs, he and his team are now working to standardize key parts of Ultravox, AOL’s own streaming technology platform. Ultravox is implemented in servers and in the firmware of certain routers to provide efficient, scalable delivery to hundreds of thousands of customers simultaneously. This multimedia software -related article

742-554: Is unavailable from your current location. Instead, enjoy listening to...." Later AOL Radio content became featured on CBS Radio 's Radio.com when the site launched (as of March 2021, this service is now known as Audacy ). In October 2011, AOL ended its partnership with CBS Radio and became partners with Slacker, moving AOL's 250 pre-programmed stations to the new service. Listeners also accessed news and sports updates from ABC News Radio and ESPN Radio respectively. This changeover, however, required iPhone/iOS users to update or download

795-468: Is worth between $ 5 and $ 10 million , with AOL taking a 12% stake (a financial, not strategic, investment) in Radionomy in the process. Radionomy relaunched the Winamp website, and it was available for download again. In December 2015, Vivendi bought a majority stake in Radionomy. Following Radionomy's acquisition, no new releases would officially surface until Winamp 5.8 in 2018. In September 2018, it

848-461: The "Pro" and "Full" installers being one and the same, in the process removing OpenCandy, Emusic, AOL Search, and AOL Toolbar from the installation bundle. This was announced to be the last release of Winamp from AOL/Nullsoft. There was a Winamp 5.7 beta program for an invitation-based Winamp Cloud feature, which would let Winamp play a user's entire cloud-stored music library across all supported devices. This feature would have allowed AOL to provide

901-469: The AOL CBS player for AIM was released. On June 11, 2008, the new AOL CBS Radio player for the web was released. AOL Radio powered by CBS Radio was supported on Adobe Flash 9 and was compatible with web browsers that supported Flash 9 on Windows 2000 through Windows Vista and Mac OS X . Listeners could connect to AOL Radio through the web, AOL Client, and AOL Radio for Mac. On July 10, 2008, AOL released

954-565: The AOL Music branding. In July 2005, a web version of AOL Radio was introduced for non-members with unlimited listening. At the end of 2005, Radio@Netscape was officially retired, with AOL Radio being the official brand. On April 30, 2008, AOL and XM Satellite Radio announced the end of their partnership and the beginning of the new partnership between AOL and CBS Radio . The partnership between AOL and CBS Radio would give AOL access to over 150 of CBS Radio's terrestrial stations. On June 10, 2008,

1007-661: The Llama Group about the code on October 15, 2024, the GitHub repository was deleted. Winamp for Android is a mobile version for the Android (version 2.1) operating system, released in beta in October 2010 with a stable release in December 2010. It includes syncing with Winamp desktop (ver. 5.59 beta+) over USB or Wi-Fi. It was received with some enthusiasm in the consumer blog press. The app

1060-499: The UK on October 20, 2003. On April 11, 2005, AOL and XM Satellite Radio joined to create Radio@AOL featuring XM. At the same time, AOL consolidated Radio@AOL and Radio@Netscape as "Radio@AOL featuring XM". This service was available to AOL members and non-members alike, with twenty XM channels offered (fifty more XM channels require a paying AOL subscription). Later in 2005, AOL changed the name of Radio@AOL to AOL Radio to align itself with

1113-514: The ability to count or find the total duration of tracks in a playlist )". Winamp3 had no backward compatibility with Winamp 2 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, even alluding to it humorously. The beta versions 2.92 and 2.95 were released with

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1166-559: The creation of specialized plug-ins for game console music files such as NSF , USF , GBS , GSF , SID , VGM , SPC , PSF, and PSF2 . Winamp was first released in 1997, when Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev, formerly students at the University of Utah , integrated their Windows user interface with the Advanced Multimedia Products ("AMP") MP3 file playback engine. The name Winamp (originally spelled WinAMP)

1219-800: 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 purchased by AOL in June 1999 for $ 80 million in stock, with Nullsoft becoming a subsidiary. AOL itself merged with Time Warner in 2000. 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. The next major Winamp version, Winamp3 (so spelled to include mp3 in

1272-468: The developing trend of MP3 file sharing . Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most downloaded Windows applications. By 2000, Winamp had over 25 million registered users and by 2001 it had 60 million users. A poor reception to the 2002 rewrite, Winamp3, was followed by the release of Winamp 5 in 2003, and a later release of version 5.5 in 2007. A now-discontinued version for Android

1325-693: The fact that there would be no extra features by paying $ 10, Winamp's popularity and warm reception brought Nullsoft $ 100,000 a month that year from $ 10 paper checks in the mail from paying users. In March, Brian Litman, managing co-founder with Uzelac of 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. Third-party reviews found that Nitrane had bugs that resulted in playing back MP3s incorrectly, and that this resulted in unstable tones being added to

1378-543: 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. During this time Winamp faced stiff competition from Apple 's iTunes . Winamp 5

1431-415: 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

1484-488: The new "AOL Radio" app when it became available. The app was also made available to Android users months later. This new format allowed users to customize their stations based on their favorite songs/artists and share them with their friends. It also allowed songs to be favorited or banned (rather than using an out-of-five rating system) and allowed songs/artists to be banned altogether. To rate and create customized stations, AOL users would have to sign up with Slacker. Though

1537-509: The new Netscape 7.0 browser. On August 22, 2002, AOL released Radio@Netscape Plus. Beginning in 2004, AOL started metering Radio@Netscape to allow only two hours of usage per day. AOL did this to avoid paying copyright royalties and to encourage users to become AOL members. On November 28, 2007, AOL announced that they might shut down their web radio services after a 38 percent increase in royalties to air music. Yahoo! and AOL discontinued directing users to their radio sites after SoundExchange ,

1590-539: The non-profit performance rights organization that collects royalties on the behalf of sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs) and featured artists for non-interactive digital transmissions, began collecting the higher fees in July. On April 30, 2008, XM and AOL Radio ended their partnership due to the change in Internet royalty rates and formed a new alliance with CBS Radio . This announcement coincidentally came months before XM merged with Sirius Satellite Radio to form

1643-416: The option to write ratings to tags (for MP3, WMA/WMV, Ogg , and FLAC ) was added. Hungarian and Indonesian installer translations and language packs were added. With the release of Winamp version 5.66 on November 20, 2013, AOL announced that Winamp.com would shut down on December 20, 2013, and Winamp would cease to be offered for download after that date. Five days later, version 5.666 was released with

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1696-577: The playback, and undoubtedly therefore violated the ISO standard. This also means that Nitrane was unlikely to have been based on the AMP software, and was more likely evidence of a hastily written MP3 decoder that didn't concern itself with standards compliance. 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

1749-424: The present-day Sirius XM service. On June 10, 2008, a new AOL Radio player debuted with AOL's 150 pre-programmed stations as well as CBS's live and local music, news/talk, and sports stations. It also enabled song skipping (limited to 6 per hour) for its users, though it's not applicable on live stations. It also allowed users unlimited presets to their favorite stations as well as access to personal songs history. It

1802-465: The service was free with limited song-skipping and fewer commercials, they offered two different subscription plans—Radio Plus and Premium Radio tiers, both of which offered ad-free radio and unlimited song-skipping and offline listening, with on-demand listening for the latter tier. In July 2013, AOL Radio updated the site's look to match that of its parent company Slacker Radio. AOL Radio was merged with Slacker Radio and discontinued on December 1, 2017. In

1855-515: The software. 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. Soon after, Nullsoft switched to an ISO decoder from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft ,

1908-465: The usability of the playlist, made the equalizer more accurate, and introduced more plug-ins. The modular windows for playlist and equalizer now matched the player's skin and could be moved around and be separated or "docked" to each other anywhere in any order. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most downloaded pieces of software for Windows . By the end of 1998, there were already over 60 plugins and hundreds of skins made for

1961-431: The way for future Winamp-related development on Mac and a fully featured media player as Winamp on Windows. However no further development occurred. An early alpha preview of Winamp3 for desktop Linux was developed in October 2001, but support was dropped not long after. Nonetheless some versions of Winamp for Windows are functional using Wine . DOSamp for MS-DOS operating systems was released in 1997. The software

2014-406: The years that followed, Slacker was changed to "LiveXLive" and as of October 6, 2021, it was renamed LiveOne . On November 18, 2002, AOL introduced Broadband Radio@AOL. Broadband Radio@AOL was built into the AOL 8.0 software, and was the first AOL Radio offering based on the AOL streaming technology Ultravox . By 2003, AOL had migrated most of its AOL Radio products to Ultravox. It was released in

2067-432: Was a portmanteau of "Windows" and "AMP". The minimalist WinAMP 0.20a was released as freeware on April 21, 1997. Its windowless, menu bar-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 developed by Advanced Multimedia Products co-founder Tomislav Uzelac , which

2120-439: Was also released, along with early counterparts for MS-DOS and Macintosh . After a five-year hiatus, Winamp 5.8 (written as Winamp 5. ∞ {\displaystyle \infty } ) was leaked to the public in 2018 before its eventual release by Radionomy; development has since resumed with the latest version 5.9.2 released on April 26, 2023. Its developer Radionomy has since rebranded as Llama Group and launched

2173-414: Was available as an app for iPhone and iOS users in the months that followed. During its time, AOL Radio was mostly available to broadband users. However, AOL made adjustments to its radio player to also be accessible to dial-up/narrowband users. On February 4, 2010, AOL Radio banned users outside the U.S. from streaming online radio. An error message pointed to Last FM . "We're sorry, this station

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2226-403: Was based on the Winamp 2 codebase, but with Winamp3 features such as modern skins incorporated via a plugin, thus incorporating the main advantages of both products. Regarding the omission of a version 4, Nullsoft joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp 4 skin" ("4 skin" being a pun on foreskin ). It was also joked that "Winamp 5 is so good they skipped a number" and "Winamp 2+3=5,". Winamp 5.0

2279-483: Was free for non-commercial use. It was compatible with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 . Winamp was the second real-time MP3 player for Windows, the first being WinPlay3 . WinAMP 0.92 was released as a freeware in May 1997. Within the standard Windows frame and menu bar, 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

2332-458: Was in talks with AOL to acquire Nullsoft. Despite AOL's announcement, the Winamp site was not shut down as planned, and on January 14, 2014, it was officially announced that Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy had bought the Nullsoft brand, which includes Winamp and SHOUTcast. No financial details were publicly announced. However, TechCrunch has reported that the sale of Winamp and Shoutcast

2385-568: Was introduced as a beta release. It is the first Winamp version for the Mac OS X platform and runs under version 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 stated that the Winamp Sync for Mac Beta would pave

2438-518: Was released June 7, 1997, renamed "Winamp", i.e., with "amp" now in lowercase. 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. Frankel formally founded Nullsoft Inc. in January 1998 and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $ 10 shareware . Despite

2491-422: Was released in December 2003. A blue themed "Modern" skin became the default interface. The media library was improved, CD burning and ripping was introduced, and other additions. The original Nullsoft team quit in 2004. As of version 5.1, Winamp development is credited to Ben Allison (Benski) and Maksim Tyrtyshny. From version 5.2 onwards, support for synchronizing with an iPod and other portable music players

2544-512: Was released in a GitHub repository under the " Winamp Collaborative License ", a license restricting the ability to create forks or distribute modified binaries (which is not considered free or open source ) and requires waiving ownership of contributions to Llama Group. After the source code was released, multiple pieces of proprietary source code were found: the entirety of the SHOUTcast server software, as well as code from Microsoft, Dolby and Intel . After The Register contacted

2597-407: Was released on September 9, 2022, with mostly under-the-hood improvements. The development team migrated the project from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019, in addition to improving support for Windows 11, high-resolution audio , and playback of HTTPS streams. The minimum supported operating system was increased to Windows 7 SP1 . On December 6, 2022, Winamp 5.9.1 was released, adding

2650-574: Was removed from the Play Store in 2014 due to a combination of factors, including a decline in user interest and the cessation of support from its parent company, AOL. It was reported in 2018 by TechCrunch that a redesigned Android app was planned alongside the announcement of the development of Winamp 6. An app for the Winamp service was released in beta for Android in July 2023. In 1997, Nullsoft also released MacAmp , an Apple Macintosh equivalent of Winamp. In October 2011, Winamp Sync for Mac

2703-425: Was reported that a Winamp 5.8 beta build 3563 was leaked to various file-sharing sites. The leaked build, bearing a build date of October 26, 2016, would be the first public build under Radionomy's umbrella, with changes including compatibility with Windows 8.1, 10 and 11, and the removal of the paid Winamp Pro. Following the leak, Radionomy officially released Winamp 5.8 build 3660 on October 18, 2018. Winamp 5.9

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2756-565: Was soon abandoned by Nullsoft to focus on the Windows version (Winamp). Ultravox (software) Ultravox or Ultravox Media On Demand Server (UltraMODS) is a streaming video project by AOL . The goal of the project is to create a service for routers akin to SHOUTcast , aiming to help the data be handled better, to allow for more efficient handling of more users, and to enable much faster channel changing. Certain streams made available by Shoutcast use Ultravox. AOL Radio has since moved to

2809-452: Was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014, now known as the Llama Group . Since version 2, it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins , and features music visualization , playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community . Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997, and quickly grew popular with over 3 million downloads, paralleling

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