Winamp, the popular desktop music player will be shutting down. AOL has announced that it will be closing down Winamp (and its related services) on December 20, following which, the software will be unavailable to download from official websites.Winamp still remains one of the most popular music players on desktops but ever since the advent of the iPod and iTunes and the more recent emergence of streaming players like Spotify, user share has dipped. In 2004, Nullsoft, the developer of Winamp, was bought by AOL for $80 million. Even now, Winamp is said to generate about $6 million of revenue annually for AOL, so the reason behind the decision to shut it down remains a strange one.
The first version of Winamp (0.2a) was launched in 1997 as freeware by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev with a focus on minimalism and MP3 playback. Winamp continued to evolve and soon after v2.0 released, it quickly became one of the most downloaded software on Windows. Winamp3 was released in 2002, following which in 2003, Winamp 5, the biggest visual change in the player’s history (and the final ‘major’ version upgrade), was launched. Winamp v5.66 was released yesterday, and will probably be the final official update for the music player.
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