Winamp is ready to make its triumphant return to your desktop – and your tablet, and your smartphone. Of course what most people don’t realise is that Winamp never really went away, people just stopped using it because there were better options on the market. Now it’s being redesigned for the modern media age.
You probably remember Winamp for its ubiquity in the early 2000s and the giant library of user-created skins you could spend hours going through to find just the right one (even though you just can’t beat the green-head guy with speaker ears). Most people probably moved on from Winamp around the time when iTunes started picking up popularity, however, and now only a small, dedicated community still swear by the antiquated player.
Winamp got its last update all the way back in 2013, but now there are changes afoot. A new update bringing the version number to 5.8 leaked recently, and now has its official release later this week. But Winamp 5.8 is just the beginning – it’s Winamp 6 you want to look out for.
The music playing landscape is now more fractured than ever, and Winamp wants to be your one go-to once again.
The mission statement for Winamp’s new revamped form is to bring everything you listen to – MP3s, podcasts and streaming services included – into one single app. While the desktop app is going to be updated, the bigger news is that Winamp will be coming to mobile devices for the first time, and it’ll be this version that brings the big updates.
That’s the pitch, of course, but as of right now it’s sorely lacking in details to give us any idea of how it’ll look. In an interview with TechCrunch, Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp owner Radionomy, declined to specify what services were confirmed to be on board with Winamp’s new ‘all-in-one’ approach, or how it would even look to link up your Spotify, Apple Music or whatever else you currently subscribe to.
As for me, though, I only have one request: bring the green head skin to the mobile app, please.
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