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Vivendi Takes Over Radionomy, Winamp Relaunch Now Possible (windowsreport.com) 117

Posted by samzenpus from the back-from-the-ashes dept.
SmartAboutThings writes: Winamp could once again be brought back to life after Vivendi Group took over the majority stake in Radionomy, the previous owner of the app who purchased it from AOL in early 2014. AOL originally planned to discontinue both Winamp and Shoutcast, but instead the company decided to sell the software to Belgian online radio service, Radionomy. The new owners initially promised that they'll keep Winamp alive, but no updates have been released since the takeover, which made most people think that Winamp era has ended for good. Vivendi Group, which owns or is involved in famous companies such as Dailymotion, Ubisoft, and Deezer, could help relaunch Winamp, although the press release announcing the acquisition offers no suggestion in this regard. The company, however, does mention Winamp and Shoutcast as two of the most important assets that will join its portfolio following the takeover.
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Vivendi Takes Over Radionomy, Winamp Relaunch Now Possible More

Vivendi Takes Over Radionomy, Winamp Relaunch Now Possible

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  • Winamp (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eyezen ( 548114 ) on Monday December 21, 2015 @05:51PM (#51161703)
    Winamp, it really whips the Llama's ass!
    • Of course, now the space is flooded with quite nice llama ass whippers. At the time it was in a field by itself, but now... Mostly just memories and name recognition left.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'm a long time broadcast DJ, and I still use Winamp at home to preview music, and to play my radio shows (occasionally VLC).

        I haven't found anything else that has the feature set that Winamp does for my application.

        I've tried every player that I come across since Winamp "died", Win and Linux based anyhow (that Apple stuff is poison), and Winamp still does it all or me.

        Sorry I couldn't log-in, hard drive crashed 10 years ago with my /. user ID password, I was in the 42,000 range, dammit (no neck beard here,

        • I used to use WinAmp for years to play my mp3 collection but have moved to MediaMonkey. I like media monkey better. Also has some nice features for DJ (including what they call DJ Mode). Making playlists is super easy (especially temporary ones when you just want songs to play in a certain order), as is searching through your archive of music. The interface is really flexible, but does take a little getting used to comming from winamp but not bad. I dont plan on going back, Ive found MediaMonkey to be

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Aczlan ( 636310 )

          I switched from Winamp to MusicBee. It handles my large music collection better than Winamp did (no sitting there for 15 mins while Winamp chews through the music library) and it also supports a single click to go from the library to the playlist.
          The only downside is that the search in the now playing list is iffy and the now playing list can only sort by artist, OR title, not by artist AND title (from what I have found so far).
          Sync is comparable (I am syncing to 1st gen iPod shuffle and a couple of flash d

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Aczlan ( 636310 )

            Also, MusicBee lets me do bulk editing of ID3 tags (ie: I can grab a bunch of songs with the artist's name spelled 5 different ways and correct them to all be the same, or add the album tag to the while album at once).

            Aaron Z

    • Love that intro. Its one of those things that burn into you mind for even and comes up when you think of the product. Like when SG1 was on and they would play a modem sound when the show started.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Funny, yeah

      BTW, Isn't Vivendi the corporation who ended up with mp3.com's decaying corpse propped up as their music store's url

      The primary reason that I ever installed winamp was to listen to the endless stream of decent, original, unsullied by corporate money mongering music produced by the likes of 'The Laziest Men on Mars'.

      mp3.com rocked because it was not controlled by suits trying to wring every penny of profit from every song, winamp rocked because it gave you a customizable means to access mp3.com

      The

    • Considering how crappy the default music player for Android is I wish WinAmp would really whip my smartphones ass.

  • Mature Product (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clonehappy ( 655530 ) on Monday December 21, 2015 @05:56PM (#51161733)

    Honestly, what more does Winamp need? For what most people who still use it want to do with it, it works just fine. Vivendi being involved in it means it'll probably promptly be ruined and made into some type of iTunes clone with a metric shit-ton of bloat and do half-a-million things in a mediocre fashion. As for Shoutcast, it also does what it's supposed to do: stream audio.

    The fact that a company owned the product and was doing nothing in particular with it was, to me, a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      One doesn't have to install a new version. I sometimes think that not enough people consider that newer versions aren't necessarily better. Although sometimes it's rather obvious, uTorrent for example.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        uTorrent is a server, running an old version of a server is a fast way to get pawned by a worm without any interaction required.

    • Honestly, what more does Winamp need?

      More input plugins, always more input plugins. I don't think anything precludes people writing those now, but more interest would probably lead to more plugins.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What could it need?

      Fixes for POODLE, HeartBleed, RSA-CRT key leaks, an update to support Windows 10, a port to Linux, a port to Android, a web site that works with IE10, a port to iOS, support for the Intel SSSE4.2 instructions on Intel, support for Intel's new AES-NI instructions, and any security vulnerabilities in the core software itself to be repaired.

      Many of the above may be automatically sucked in with a recompile if you update to newer support libraries.

    • Fixing the video support would be nice. Winamp is still my preferred video player because it's about the only video player I've found with a good playlist editor (about the only other I've found is Zoomplayer). But the video player itself is a bit quirky. I can fix a lot of it by disabling the Winamp built-in support for things like MKV and Flash video and letting Winamp fall back on DirectShow, but it will still randomly choke on some files for no apparent reason.

  • Ummmm.....so? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is about as relevant as someone resurrecting Trumpet Winsock. Sure, Winamp was great in its time, but there are so many other options now that are as good or better that it would just get lost in the shuffle.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sowelu ( 713889 )

      Ohhh man. That brings back fond memories of MUSHing and painful memories of Trumpet Telnet silently hanging if new text came in while you had a selection highlighted.

  • Strange bedfellows (Score:3)

    by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Monday December 21, 2015 @06:01PM (#51161779)

    Vivendi also acquired UMG and most of EMI over the last decade or so.

    Winamp, EMI and Universal Music Group under one roof... how times have changed.

  • Shoutcast is more important. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by astro ( 20275 ) on Monday December 21, 2015 @06:11PM (#51161849) Homepage

    I strongly believe that Shoutcast is the more important of the two applications here, and likely the reason for the acquisition. There are approximately a zillion interchangeable client players / music library managers, but Shoutcast and other compatible programs like icecast are dominant in the indie-scale internet radio space. There are tons of clients (one open source example - Butt) that can broadcast using the original Soundcast system. I liked Winamp long back in the day, but I do think Shoutcast is the more important news here.

    I have experience: I co-founded http://houseofsound.org - and they are still using Icecast to broadcast their streams.

  • I would leave iTunes in a short minute if WinAmp provided syncing capabilities to my iPhone and iPad, without all that bullshit sales and marketing gimmickry.

    • Winamp 5.666 has a plugin called "Nullsoft iPod Device Plug-in". I have never tried it though.

      • It works. I bought a used iPod years ago and didn't want to deal with iTunes. I've been using that plugin for years without any problems.

        • It works, but it's not as good as the ml_ipod plug-in, which offers better features and functionality. Sadly, if you want to use it, then you're stuck on Winamp 5.63 (not like it's that big of an issue)

  • I remember in 1997-98 or so, shoutcast + winamp was the latest greatest thing. Stream from your own connection! Have your own radio station! I did it, too. I had a reasonably popular shoutcast station that had around 20 people connected at any one time. Then, there was icecast, which was the open source version. What happened with that?

    I just remember that my 20 users was enough to keep me high enough in the standings on the shoutcast.com web page, but what happened was these losers started creating t

    • Time to expand your narrow worldview. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ...there were radio stations in Czech and Brazil with "thousands" of users. I listened to a few of them...why would anyone ever tune in? Crappy music followed by ads in a foreign language.

      Czech? Brazil? It seems you were the foreigner.

      • Do you even understand how people's point of view changes depending on who they are? From my point of view, they're the foreigner. That's what the word "foreigner" means, someone from a country other than your own. It really pains me to deal with fixed-minded people who cannot flex adequately to process new data. I really feel sorry for your types. What torture it must be to live in a mental prison like that, day after day, year after year, and yet not even realize that you're crippled.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You can't flex enough to realise the thousands of people listening to those streams are not listening to a foreign language.

    • Most went to Justin.tv and evolved into TWITCH.TV. Totalbiscuit started on shoutcast.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cito ( 1725214 )

      I still run a icecast station. It's listed by Tune-in and many android radio apps have it listed. Dude Suit Radio

      I quit doing anything the the website as I had no ideas and blog was boring. But I keep the radio stream up. I wrote the script that DJ's it in perl, no ads on the stream.

      been running several years

  • There are already a number of comments saying things to the effect of "this doesn't matter because winamp is outdated and there are much better alternatives."

    So as someone who still uses WinAmp, what are those alternatives and how are they better?

    I still use winamp because it's simple and efficient at what i want it to do. It works with the library of mp3 files i have (supposedly it also handles flac, but i my ears aren't good enough to require using up that much drive space) without requiring me to con

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      foobar2000, and it has both true shuffle and random play.

      i switched because around 2004-2005 winamp was beginning to be overwhelmed by my music collection, both in delays and with the UI being too hard to manage.

      also tha "add to playback queue allows up to 64 queued plays without altering or creating playlists, and as playback proceeds from the last entry it can be used to temporarilly override order in one or more playlists or to create progressions between playlists, and it can have items right off the
      • I've always found foobar2000's sound harsh and hard to listen too when playing mp3 and flacs.. also not a fan of its interface.. IMO its a bit too much for something as simple as a media player.

        I've been using WinAmp since 1999ish and have yet had any issues with it (even on my daily icecast radio stream playlist of just under 38,000 entries) it just works and unlike many newer media players, I can select the output device I want.

        I really hope this sale doesn't ruin what's left of WinAmp. It would a

    • I'm joining with the crowd recommending Foobar2000; I got into it because I wanted something for my Linux box, and when WinAmp went down I switched entirely.

      For video on Windows, though, try Media Player Classic--lightweight, and like Foobar2000 is quite portable though unlike Foobar2k no special installation is necessary. (I've run it on a system with a good codec collection installed--I use CCCP, and am hoping to find a Linux equivalent of it--with just the program file dropped into a folder.)

  • Still Rocking Winamp Daily Since 1997 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Winamp has taken me through Junior High, High School, College, and Beyond. I've seen countless media players come and go, but all I need is trusty Winamp with my personally-edited Receiver skin (original artist Timo Henke, year 2001). Sure the new programs do all this fancy stuff, but all I need is a nice simple player for my tunes with convenient Windows Explorer folder integration. Hard to believe it's been 18 years of near-daily usage. Keep on rockin' with Winamp in the Geek world!

  • Still use Winamp (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I listen to pre-recorded radio shows and I like the fact that I can dock Winamp at the top of the screen with hiding it from view until the mouse comes close to the top of the screen. Can Foobar 2000 do that?

  • I like Audacious Media Player & Clementine (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    http://audacious-media-player.... [audacious-...player.org]

    "Audacious runs on Linux, on BSD derivatives, and on Microsoft Windows."

    "Audacious is an open source audio player. A descendant of XMMS, Audacious plays your music how you want it, without stealing away your computerâ(TM)s resources from other tasks. Drag and drop folders and individual song files, search for artists and albums in your entire music library, or create and edit your own custom playlists. Listen to CDâ(TM)s or stream music from the Internet. Tweak the

  • Not caring that much about Winamp, but... (Score:3)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @12:07AM (#51163247)

    I am a little concerned about the takeover of Radionomy. That's my main source of music on the intertubes and I'm hoping Vivendi doesn't decide that changes need to be made and eff that up.

  • I've used Winamp since about 1998 or so, and while i've tried others (recently tried Groove), I always go back to Winamp since it just works and can easily manage my music library that I have collected for 18 or so years.

    But I am really interested to see how it will change if it does. I mean, a lot of the passion of Winamp development died out in 2004 when Justin Frankel, the creator left. I am not saying that the team after him hasn't done a good job maintaining it and adding upgrades, but it seems lik
  • with mp3.com; I'm not the least bit worried.

    *starts archiving all the winamp content he can.*
  • There's nothing strange about the lack of updates, anyone having read the Winamp forums (alive through all this) knows that they had to remove large parts of the AOL code and had already announced a very tentative 2015 re-release date. They've started alpha builds recently, so everything is proceeding smoothly.

  • --If you like WinAmp on Windows, try the DEADBEEF player for Linux -- similar interface and features; comes with a large multi-band Equalizer, and plays .ogg files and .mod(.it, .s3m, .xm, etc) files out of the box.

    http://deadbeef.sourceforge.ne... [sourceforge.net]

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