If you grew up during the heyday of the dot-com bubble and experienced the onset of the musical revolution that was the democratization of MP3, You are probably familiar with Winamp.
Winamp left a deep mark on the first generation of MP3 player programs on PC with a first version released in April 1997… more than 20 years ago! However, it took a year and a half, at the end of 1998, and the release of a version 2.0 for the small free software to become popular. Simple and effective, despite questionable ergonomics, but customizable with skins and plugins, Winamp allowed millions of people around the world to listen to the very first MP3 files.
In a way, it is a monument in the field of software. Bought in 1999 by AOL, the software continued its evolution until 2013 and the announcement by AOL of the closure of the winamp.com site. Finally the site was never closed, because in the meantime, the company Radionomy bought it from AOL… unfortunately no update has come to improve the software since the last version dated December 2013, and this despite a message present for 5 years on the site "There's more coming soon" (there are things coming soon).
As of today, Winamp is still available download for PC and Mac. But the good news is if you want a little snapshot of nostalgia without the hassle of reinstalling Winamp, there is an online Winamp emulator that will allow you to rediscover this legendary software.
webamp indeed reproduces this MP3 player very faithfully.
Most of the features are operational: adding MP3s from your computer, equalizer, preamp... It is also possible to modify the WinAmp skin like in the good old days... and a small improvement, you will be able to load music from Dropbox.
Finally, for those who are super nostalgic, you can listen and re-listen to the software's famous intro: " whippin' a llama's ass“…a classic!”
Unfortunately, the only thing that doesn't seem to work is the ability to add plugins. But hey... it's already not bad...
