Winamp rises from the ashes in 2019 with new release

Winamp used to be one of the most popular audio players but after the early 2000s the tool fell out of favor. Not much was done with it after the sale to AOL in 1999, and in 2014 the program was acquired by a Belgian company called Radionomy.

The latter is planning to bring back Winamp. A new 5.8 version is expected next week, a prelude for a bigger relaunch in 2019 that promises a "complete listening experience". Radionomy is trying to reinvent Winamp as the one-place stop for platform-agnostic mobile audio. Will be interesting to see if the firm succeeds. Winamp still has a very large userbase, but many users, myself included, like the program because you can still use it like it's 1999.

“There will be a completely new version next year, with the legacy of Winamp but a more complete listening experience,” said Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Radionomy, the company that bought Winamp (or what remained of it) in 2014. “You can listen to the MP3s you may have at home, but also to the cloud, to podcasts, to streaming radio stations, to a playlist you perhaps have built.”

“People want one single experience,” he concluded. “I think Winamp is the perfect player to bring that to everybody. And we want people to have it on every device.”

Via: TechCrunch