Death Knell Sounds for Nullsoft, Winamp

11 Nov, 2004 at 12:58am ET Article published in Tech

The last members of the original Winamp team have said goodbye to AOL and the door has all but shut on the Nullsoft era, BetaNews has learned.

Only a few employees remain to prop up the once-ubiquitous digital audio player with minor updates, but no further improvements to Winamp are expected. Winamp’s abandonment comes as no surprise to those close to the company who say the software has been on life support since the resignation of Nullsoft founder and Winamp creator Justin Frankel last January. The marriage of Nullsoft and AOL was always one of discontent. After AOL acquired the small company in 1999 for around $100 million, the young team of Winamp developers was assimilated into a strict corporate culture that begged for rebellion. Although Nullsoft was initially given a long leash by AOL, It wasn’t long until the two ideologies collided.

submitted by: Kwitko

Source: BetaNews

Comments

11 Nov 2004 ~ 1:05am primesuspect But THEY GOT a HUNDRED MILLION BUCKS WOOHOO
11 Nov 2004 ~ 1:15am Thrax Winamp 2.9x 4 life.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 1:37am entropy Ack. I heart Winamp .

(Thrax, why the hell are you using 2.9x...?)
11 Nov 2004 ~ 1:40am Thrax Because 3 and 5 can go to hell.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 2:07am Linc Chalk up another point for the poisonous touch of AOL.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 4:27am Enverex

Thrax wrote:

Winamp 2.9x 4 life.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 5:05am Thrax Hey Enverex. Good to see you around.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 5:39am Enverex Been a bit busy lately what with work, Uni kicking into high gear and trying to buy a bike (Kawasaki GPZ500S, aka Ninja) but yeah, still browse when I have time, heh :rolleyes2
11 Nov 2004 ~ 7:02am Thrax I kinda thought that it was University taking it's toll on the ol' free time. Nice bike too.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 4:14pm pigflipper I haven't upgraded beyond v2.8 because all the newer ones suck imo. Too bad they are basically gone now though, still the best mp3 player regardless of which version of it you are using.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 5:57pm EMT Yeah 2 was pretty sweet... I'm on 5 mainly for the Library feature, although it's not perfect.

This is sad news though
11 Nov 2004 ~ 6:58pm TheLostSwede That just tells how much money AOL have really. They invested a hundred mills on a small company and bought it, ran it for a year or so with god knows how many employees, probably spent another hundred on the project. I really hate companys like that. Sad news indeed. Winamp and Napster was a great combo back then.
11 Nov 2004 ~ 8:49pm KingFish Maybe it'll open the doors for another company with a like mind to fill the gap created. I certainly hope so.

KF
12 Nov 2004 ~ 9:29pm panzerkw I still use Winamp 2.9 because my favorite skin only works on that version
15 Nov 2004 ~ 2:25am Garg I've been using Winamp 5 for awhile now, and I don't see how ver. 2 could be any better. I never liked ver. 3, but I switched from 2 to 5 as soon as the beta came out. At any rate, any version is more dersireable than just about any other media player out there.