Normally, in order to play media files (music, videos, etc.) on a computer from an external device such as a, or a, you need to make sure that an appropriate is already installed on the machine you are using. However, if you don't want to be tied down to a particular computer just because it has the right software on it, then a more flexible way is to use a portable version of your favorite media playing software. This is commonly referred to as a portable app and can be stored on virtually any hardware device (including an iPod, PMP, etc.) that can be connected to a computer (usually via USB or Bluetooth). Portable apps (short for applications) are software distributions that don't need to be installed on a computer to run. They are therefore perfect to without you having to install the right software on every computer you use. Using this type of software isn't just for external hardware devices either. You can burn for example with a portable jukebox app on them so you can play your music on any computer with a CD-ROM drive.

Another advantage of using a portable media player app is that everything remains on your portable device so you don't have to be concerned with copying files over to a computer's fixed hard drive or worry about leaving any traces of your activities.

English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish, Hungarian, IndonesianWebsiteWinamp is a for, and, originally developed by and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company, which they later sold to in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by in 2014. Since version 2 it has been sold as and supports extensibility with and, and features, and a media library, supported by a large.Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997, and grew quickly popular with over 3 million downloads, paralleling the developing trend of MP3 (music). Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998.

The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most 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. Contents.Features Playback formats Winamp supports music playback using, audio layers and,. Winamp was one of the first widely used music players on Windows to support playback of by default. It supports for MP3 and AAC and for volume leveling across tracks.

CD support includes playing and music from, optionally with, and music to CDs. The standard version limits maximum burn speed and datarate; the 'Pro' version removes these limitations. Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video.

For MPEG Video, AVI, and other unsupported video types, Winamp uses Microsoft's API for playback, allowing playback of most of the video formats supported. 5.1 is supported where formats and decoders allow.

Media Library At installation, Winamp scans the user's system for media files to add to the Media Library database. It supports full filenames and Unicode for media files. In the Media Library user interface pane, under Local Media, several selectors ( Audio, Video, date, and frequency) permit display of subsets of media files with greater detail. Adding album art and track tags Get Album Art permits retrieval of cover art, and confirmation before adding the image to the database. Autotagging analyzes a track's audio using the service and retrieves the song's ID2 and ID3 metadata. Podcatcher Winamp can also be used as an media feeds capable of displaying articles, downloading, or playing such content as. Provides a directory and RSS subscription system for.

Media player device support Winamp has extendable support for and devices, and, and syncs unprotected music to the. Media Monitor Winamp Media Monitor allows web-based browsing and bookmarking music blog websites and automatically offering for streaming or downloading all MP3 files there. The Media Monitor is preloaded with music blog URLs. Winamp Remote Winamp Remote allows remote playback (streaming) of unprotected media files on the user's PC via the Internet.

Remote adjusts bitrate based on available bandwidth, and can be controlled by web interface, and mobile phones. Plug-ins In February 1998, Winamp was rewritten as a 'general-purpose audio player' with a architecture. This feature was received well by reviewers. Development was early, diverse, and rapid: 66 plugins were published by November 1998. The Winamp (SDK) allows software developers to create seven different types of plug-ins. Input: decodes specific file formats. Output: sends data to specific devices or files.: provides sound activated graphics.: manipulates audio for special effects.

General Purpose plug-ins add convenience or UI features ( Media Library, alarm clock, or pause when logged out). Media Library plug-ins add functions to the Media Library plug-in. Portables plug-ins support. A visualization plug-in in Winamp Plug-in development support increased Winamp's flexibility for, for example, a plethora of specialized plug-ins for game music files such as,. Skins are bitmap files which alter the aesthetic design of the Winamp (GUI) and can add functionality with scripting. Winamp published documentation on skin creation in 1998 with the release of Winamp 2 and invited Winamp users to publish skins on Winamp.com. As of 2000 there were nearly 3,000 Winamp skins available.

The ability to use skins contributed to Winamp's popularity early in MP3 development. With the increasing number of available skins, or categories of skins developed, such as 'Stereo', 'Anime', and 'Ugly'.

Online communities of skin designers such as 1001Skins.com and Skinz.org have contributed thousands of designs; also at GnomeArt. Designers see skins as an opportunity to be creative: nontraditional examples have included, and designs. The Winamp skin format is the most popular, the most commonly adopted by other media player software, and is usable across platforms. One example is the player for and systems, which can use unmodified Winamp 2 skin files. Winamp 5 supports two types of skins – 'classic' skins designed to Winamp 2 specifications (static collections of ), and more flexible, freeform 'modern' skins per the Winamp3 specification. Modern skins support true transparency, control, a docked toolbar, and other innovations to the user interface.

History Until the release of Winamp in 1997, was the sole option for playing MP3-compressed music on Microsoft Windows. Initial releases.

WinAMP 0.92Winamp was first released in 1997, when Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev, formerly students at the, integrated their user interface with the Advanced Multimedia Products ('AMP') MP3 file playback engine. The name Winamp (originally spelled WinAMP) was a 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, which was free for non-commercial use.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 a green, with track name, MP3 bitrate, and 'mixrate' in green. There was no position bar, and a blank space where the and would later appear. Multiple files on the command line or dropped onto its icon were enqueued in the playlist.Winamp 1. Winamp 1Version 1.006 was released June 7, 1997, renamed 'Win amp' (lowercase).

It showed a spectrum analyzer and color-changing volume slider, but no waveform display. The AMP non-commercial license was included in its.According to Tomislav Uzelac, Frankel licensed the AMP 0.7 engine June 1, 1997. Frankel formally founded Inc. In January 1998 and continued development of Winamp, which changed from freeware to $10. Despite 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 the playback, and undoubtedly therefore violated the ISO standard.

Winamp 2, shown with default Base SkinWinamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most pieces of software for. The new version improved the usability of the playlist, made the equalizer more accurate, introduced more plug-ins and allowed skins for the playlist and equalizer windows.PlayMedia filed a federal lawsuit against Nullsoft in March 1999. In May 1999, PlayMedia was granted an by Federal Judge 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 decoder from the, 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 and.Nullsoft was famously bought by in June 1999 for US$80 million in stock, with Nullsoft becoming a subsidiary. AOL itself merged with 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. Winamp3 The next major Winamp version, Winamp3 (so spelled to include mp3 in 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 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 the ability to count or find the total duration of in a )'. Winamp3 had no with Winamp 2 plugins, and the 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 2.92 and 2.95 were released with the inclusion of some of the functionality of the upcoming Winamp 5. During this period the cross-platform framework and toolkit was derived from parts of the Winamp3 source code. For, Nullsoft released an of Winamp3 on October 9, 2001, but has not updated it despite continued user interest.During this time Winamp faced stiff competition from 's.

Winamp 5. Winamp 5 featuring Winamp Modern skinWinamp 5 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 ). It was also joked that 'Winamp 5 is so good they skipped a number' and 'Winamp 2+3=5,'. Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003.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 is built-in. Winamp 5.5 Winamp 5.5: The 10th Anniversary Edition was released on October 10, 2007, ten years after the first release of Winamp (a 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 a unified player and media library interface skin. This version dropped support for.

Winamp 5.6. Winamp 5.621, when listening to the streamWinamp 5.6 features Android Wi-Fi support and direct mouse wheel support. Fraunhofer AAC codec with VBR encoding support was implemented. Moreover, the option to write ratings to tags (for MP3, WMA/WMV, and ) was added. Hungarian and Indonesian installer translations and language packs were added.With the release of Winamp version 5.66 on November 20, 2013, 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 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.

Winamp 5.7 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 a music locker service that would essentially compete with other. The beta program was cancelled months before the announcement to shut down the Winamp project.

Acquisition by Radionomy On November 20, 2013, AOL announced that on December 20, 2013, it would shut down Winamp.com, 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 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, has reported that the sale of Winamp and Shoutcast is worth between $5 and $10, 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. Despite the website claiming that Winamp will be returning soon, as of 2018 no new stable version has been developed since version 5.666 from November 2013. In December 2015, bought a majority stake in Radionomy. The first official version of Winamp since Radionomy's acquisition is version 5.8.Winamp 5.8 It was reported that Winamp 5.8 beta has been leaked to the web despite that the release date of the build was on October 26, 2016. The leaked build is the first Winamp beta released under Radionomy's umbrella.

There are many improvements and changes of the leaked build, including the full compatibility with Windows 10 and Windows 8.1. This version also replaced functions originally locked behind Winamp Pro with free alternatives of which were still in alpha, and thus Winamp regained its status as freeware.Following the leak, Radionomy decided to release a revised Winamp 5.8 officially to the public on October 18, 2018, albeit that the version is still in beta, continued to feature the old Winamp logo, and that the installer stated the version was confidential and was not to be distributed. The newer update of Winamp 5.8 has a build number of 3660, compared to the October 2016 version's build number of 3563.

Winamp 6 On October 15, 2018, Radionomy's CEO, Alexandre Saboundjan announced that a new version of Winamp – Winamp 6 – will be released in 2019. At the moment, there are no further details about what this new version of Winamp will look like, including which services Winamp would support or how the new version of the app would integrate with newer music platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify.

Winamp for windows 7 ultimate

On other platforms Android. Winamp for Android streaming an Internet radio station over WiFiWinamp for Android is a mobile version for the (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 WiFi. It was received with some enthusiasm in the consumer blog press.

The app was removed from the in 2014.It was reported by TechCrunch that a redesigned Android app was planned alongside the announcement of the development of Winamp 6. MacOS In October 2011, Winamp Sync for Mac was introduced as a beta release. It is the first Winamp version for the platform and runs under 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 states that the Winamp Sync for Mac Beta will pave the way for future Winamp-related development under macOS. Easter eggs Winamp has historically included a number of: hidden features that are accessible via undocumented operations. One example is an image of, one of Winamp's original authors, hidden in Winamp's About dialog box. The included Easter eggs have changed with versions of Winamp, and over thirty have been documented elsewhere. Derivative works Unagi is the codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp core technologies. AOL announced in 2004 that Unagi would be incorporated into AOL Media Player (AMP), in development. After, AMP was discontinued in 2005, but portions lived on in AOL's Web-based player.

See also.References. Owen, Darren (aka DrO). Retrieved January 1, 2014. Archived from on May 30, 2012. Retrieved February 9, 2014. TariK. Retrieved January 1, 2014.

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Cambridge University Press. P. 391. ^ Mengyi Pu, Ida (November 3, 2005). P. 220. ^ Bronson, Po (July 1998).

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Retrieved April 7, 2007. ^ Morrison, Kelly Green and Whitehouse, Karen (2006). Top 10 downloads of the past 10 years.

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Enhanced protection program benefits and perquisites information. Retrieved March 28, 2010. Dixon, Douglas; Dreier, Troy; France, Jasmine (August 6, 2006). Retrieved March 28, 2010. ^ Van Buskirk, Eliot (November 10, 2007).

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Winamp 5.33 especially improves Unicode support. Graffeo, Deana (September 14, 2005).;. Retrieved March 7, 2010. Hart-Davis, Guy (2007).

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Online: ($). As of June 2010, lists over 1900 Classic skins and over 700 Modern skins. Dabbs, Alistair (2002). Retrieved June 22, 2010. Hacker, p.141. As of June 2010, lists over 3000 Winamp skins in over 20 categories.

January 11, 2014, at the lists over 500 Winamp skins. Archived from on January 13, 2016. Tidwell, p. 308.

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Mook, Nate (December 20, 2005). Retrieved March 31, 2010.Further reading.

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