Its contribution might not be entirely apparent, but let me list some: In fact, I liked the Winamp 2 series so much, that even on modern installations of Winamp, I refuse to use anything BUT the Classic Skin. It really whips the llama’s ass!” It seems that its ass-whipping days are drawing to a close. One of the most memorable sounds was the demo.mp3 file provided, which proudly states “Winamp. It was also immensely popular – it was the version which lured AOL to purchase Nullsoft itself. The Winamp 2.0 series was the one I remember best – it was free, it was small and fast to download over dialup, it was capable of playlists, EQ, visualization (if your computer could handle it) and it was modular with a plug-in interface so you could extend the capabilities of the media player itself. It was said that the $10 registration fee was sufficient enough funding that the next version of Winamp was made freeware! I didn’t use Winamp 1.0, as by that time, I had not yet discovered MP3s or the need for a media player (having no dial-up internet on a regular basis).

The first true release of Winamp 1.0 was a shareware software, which was a commonly told fairytale about how shareware could become too successful. The media players at the time tended to be monolithic software which was unsophisticated with very narrow format support – playlists, EQs, and fancy displays were not part of the mix. Their name was a cheeky play upon the Microsoft name, and Winamp was their flagship product. Winamp was a media player software from a company called Nullsoft Inc.

Today, is the 20th of December in Australia, and although it has not reached the 20th of December in the US, I felt this is probably the better time to muster up my tribute to Winamp, and what it meant to me. Since that time, many people have poured out their tributes to the “great” media player, one which fell quite severely from grace after AOL’s acquisition. The banner on Winamp’s website definitely said that it would be no longer available. I first saw it on Slashdot, proclaiming that Winamp was to be shut down on the 20th December 2013. Around a month ago, the news stories already started making the rounds.

Pioneer winamp skin