Winamp Is Back (Again) to Play all Those MP3s You Don't Have

The transition from buying music on physical discs to buying music on computers and mobile devices was not easy. Digital music files are portable and easy to share on the internet because of the small file sizes of mp3s. Winamp, a lightweight but fully- featured media player that worked without the bloat of other offerings, remained a loyal companion to those who had amassed massive collections of mp3s.

After the music industry figured out ways to securely sell music files online, and eventually transitioned to streaming services where users never actually ended up with thousands of media files stored on a device, the need for Winamp faded away.

Four years later, in 2018, Winamp 5.8 found its way online, with the developers behind it promising major updates that would add more modern features, but it would be another four years before Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 9999 would be made available for download through the Win. Winamp has the option to use the classic skins during installation but the code base has been upgraded from 2008 to 2019. That upgrade will benefit the development team as it begins to introduce new features, but it also means that the new Winamp will need Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or later to run. Older versions of the llama's ass-whiping media player are required for those of you still holding onto Windows.

While Winamp's media player looks the same as it did decades ago, on a modern desktop with loads of screen resolution, Winamp's controls look small. With the successful transition to the new version of Winamp, the development team can get to work on modernizing Winamp and add support for modern digital audio formats and streaming services.