Winamp3 music Music

Winamp3 music is a proprietary media player written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of Time Warner. It is skinnable, multi-format freeware / shareware.

Winamp3 music was first released by Justin Frankel in 1996. Current Winamp3 music development is credited to Ben Allison (benski), Will Fisher, Taber Buhl, Maksim Tyrtyshny, Chris Edwards and Stephen (Tag) Loomis.

In 2005 Winamp3 music grew from 33 million monthly users to over 57 million monthly users,[2] making it the second[citation needed] most actively used media player globally, second only to Windows Media Player.

Winamp3 music 0.020a, playing a file and showing sole menu

The minimalist Winamp3 music 0.20a was released as freeware on 21 April 1997.[3] Its windowless menubar-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 by Tomislav Uzelac, which was free for non-commercial use.[4] The acronym "AMP" stood for "Advanced Multimedia Products". Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev integrated this engine with their user interface.

Winamp3 music 0.92 was released as freeware in May 1997. Within the standard Windows frame and menubar, it had the beginnings of the "classic" Winamp3 music GUI: dark gray rectangle with silver 3D-effect transport buttons, a red/green volume slider, time displayed in a green LED font, with trackname, MP3 bitrate and "mixrate" in green. There was no position bar, and a blank space where the spectrum analyzer and waveform analyzer would later appear. Multiple files on the command line or dropped onto its icon were enqueued in the playlist.

Winamp3 music 1

Version 1.006 was released June 7, 1997[5] renamed "Winamp3 music"(lower case). It showed a spectrum analyzer, and color changing volume slider, but no waveform display. The AMP non-commercial license was included in its help menu.

According to Tomislav Uzelac, Frankel licensed the AMP 0.7 engine June 1, 1997[6] Frankel formally founded Nullsoft, Inc. in January 1998, and continued development of Winamp3 music, which changed from freeware to $10 shareware.[7] In March, Uzelac's newly founded company, PlayMedia Systems[1] 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.

Version 1.90, released March 31, 1998 was the first release as a general-purpose audio player, and documented on the Winamp3 music.com website as supporting plugins, of which it included two input plugins (MOD and MP3) and a visualization plugin.[8] The installer for Version 1.91, released 18 days later, included wave, cdda, and Windows tray handling plugins, as well as the famous DEMO.MP3 file "Winamp3 music, it really whips the llama's ass".[9]

Winamp3 music 2

Winamp3 music 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions became widely used, and Winamp3 music was one of the most downloaded pieces of software for Microsoft Windows.[10] 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 Systems filed a federal lawsuit against Nullsoft in March 1999. In June, Nullsoft was bought by AOL for $80 million.[11] PlayMedia was granted an injunction on Nullsoft distributing Nitrane, and the same month the lawsuit was settled with out-of-court licensing and confidentiality agreements. Soon after, Nullsoft switched to an ISO decoder from the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, the developers of the MP3 format.

Winamp3 music 2.10, released March 24, 1999 included a new version of the "Llama" demo.mp3 featuring a musical sting and bleating.

Nullsoft relaunched the Winamp3 music-specific Winamp3 music.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 Winamp3 music surpassed 25 million registrants.[11]

Winamp3 music3

The next major Winamp3 music version, Winamp3 music3 (so spelled to include mp3 in the name and to mark its separation from the Winamp3 music 2 codebase), was released on August 9, 2002. It was a complete rewrite of version 2, newly based on the Wasabi application framework, which offered additional functionality and flexibility. Winamp3 music3 was developed parallel to Winamp3 music 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 tracks in a playlist). Winamp3 music3 had no backward compatibility with Winamp3 music 2 skins and plugins, and the SHOUTcast sourcing plugin was not supported. No Winamp3 music3 version of SHOUTcast was ever released.

Many Winamp3 music3 users reverted to Winamp3 music 2. Nullsoft responded by continuing development of Winamp3 music 2 to versions 2.9 and 2.91. The beta versions 2.92 and 2.95 were released with the inclusion of some upcoming Winamp3 music 5 functionality. During this period the Wasabi cross-platform application framework and skinnable GUI toolkit was derived from parts of the Winamp3 music3 source code. For Linux, Nullsoft released an alpha version of Winamp3 music3 October 9, 2001 but has not updated it despite continued user interest.[1]

Winamp3 music 5

The Winamp3 music 2 and Winamp3 music3 branches were later fused into Winamp3 music 5 — Nullsoft justified their non-sequential christening by quipping that 2 + 3 = 5 — taking the best parts from both applications. Developers also joked that "nobody wants to see a Winamp3 music 4 skin" ('4 skin' being a pun on foreskin). Winamp3 music 5 was based on the Winamp3 music 2 codebase, with several Winamp3 music3 features (e.g. modern skins) incorporated. Winamp3 music 5.0 was released in December 2003. Most of the Wasabi framework built for creating Winamp3 music3 and its components was released as open source, and as of 2005 an active development effort has succeeded in making a standalone version of Wasabi, minus the skinning and scripting modules which were never released.

Winamp3 music 5 comes in three versions. Lite and Full are freeware, and Pro requires registration and (as of early 2007) sells for US$19.95. The Lite version has far less functionality (largely supplementable with plugins) while still replicating most of Winamp3 music 2's feature set in a far smaller installer. The Full version offers a richer feature set, including music ripping and CD burning at limited speeds (6x for ripping and 2x for burning). The Pro version features unlimited speed music ripping and CD burning and MP3 encoding.

The next scheduled release is Winamp3 music 5.5: 10th Anniversary Edition, due for release in October 2007 to mark the tenth year since the first release of Winamp3 music. A beta preview was released on September 10, 2007. New features to the player include album art support, and a unified player and media library interface.[12]

Concepts

Skins

Alexandru Popa's "EVO", a "classic" Winamp3 music skin

Mischa Klement's "Template Amp 1.1", a template created to aid Winamp3 music skinners

Skins are revisions of the graphical user interface of Winamp3 music. Winamp3 music has published documentation on skin creation, and invites contributors to publish skins on Winamp3 music.com. Winamp3 music 5.0 supports "classic" skins designed to Winamp3 music 2 specifications, and "modern" skins per the Winamp3 music3 specification. Modern skins support alpha channels, a docked toolbar, and other innovations to the GUI, but many skin designers remain committed to the "classic" skin specification. Skin templates, such as those created by Mischa Klement and Jellby, have aided the production of increasingly sophisticated skins. Online communities of skin designers, such as 1001 Winamp3 music Skins and deviantart, and the active forums on Winamp3 music.com attest to the popularity of the feature and its flexibility as a medium for creative expression. As with all artistic mediums, as the number of independently produced works has increased, genre styles or categories of skins have emerged. Promoting celebrities, fashion models, films, cars, bands, brands, and other forms of entertainment remains a common staple of the medium. Artists have also created designs for their own sake: parodies of other interfaces, nostalgic emulations of old hardware and operating systems, hand drawn art, 3-dimension renderings employing transparencies, minimalist and high contrast designs, and clever implementations of vector graphics. The size of the development community has led to the inclusion of Winamp3 music skin support in other digital media software such as Windows Media Player and XMMS.

Plug-ins

The Winamp3 music software development kit allows software developers to extend Winamp3 music's functionality through the use of plug-ins, which are categorized into the following seven types:

* Input plug-ins decode media data contained in specific file formats.

* Output plug-ins control the destination of decoded audio (such as the DirectSound device or direct-to-file writing).

* Visualization plug-ins provide sound activated graphics.

* DSP/Effect plug-ins manipulate audio (reverb, spacialization, equalization, compression, etc).

* General Purpose plug-ins add functionality or extensions to Winamp3 music (Media Library, alarm clock, or pause when logged out).

* Media Library plug-ins add functionality or extensions to the Media Library plug-in (gen_ml, included with Winamp3 music).

* Device plug-ins add support of portable media players to the Portable Media Player plug-in (ml_pmp, included with Winamp3 music)

Easy development of specialized Input plug-ins contributed to Winamp3 music's versatility compared to monolithic media players. For example, popular video game music has driven development of plugins to playback game console music files, such as NSF, USF, GBS, GSF, SID, GYM, SPC, PSF and PSF2.

A wide variety of plug-ins are available on the Winamp3 music web site.[13]

Features

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The following are features of Winamp3 music 5:

* MIDI, MOD, MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC, M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, WMA, Chiptunes and many other audio formats supported.

* AVI support, which is played through the appropriate DirectShow filters installed on the user's system; MPEG; and NSV (Nullsoft Streaming Video).

* Plug-in support for additional input and output formats, sound effects (via DSP plugins), and visual effects (notably Advanced Visualization Studio, or AVS, and MilkDrop).

* Support for both Winamp3 music 2's "classic" skins and Winamp3 music3's more flexible "modern" skins(via official plugin provided in "Full" install).

* Freely available access to many types of streaming media, including:

o Internet radio and Internet television (via the SHOUTcast technology).

o XM Satellite Radio.

o Music Tracks.

o Music Videos (not available in all territories).

o AOL Video Content.

o In2TV classic television programs.

o SHOUTcast Wire (podcast directory and subscription functionality).

o Singingfish audio/video search engine.

* Support for ripping data from audio CDs, optionally with CD-Text, into MP3 or AAC formats, a feature enhanced in Winamp3 music Pro.

* Support for burning music to CDs, a feature enhanced in Winamp3 music Pro.

* True alpha channel (per-pixel transparency).

* Support for winshade mode as well as docking, which allows Winamp3 music to operate as an always-on-top media bar.

* Support 5.1 Surround where formats and decoders allow.

* Support Gapless playback for MP3 and AAC.

* Replay Gain support.

* Support Unicode metadata for media files.

* Full Unicode Filename Support.

* Extendable Portable media player support, currently offering device plugins for:

o Apple iPod.

o Creative NOMAD Jukebox.

o Microsoft PlaysForSure.

o Mass Storage Compliant devices.

o ActiveSync devices, such as those running Windows Mobile.

* Support Global hotkeys.

* Customized install options packaged with NSIS.

* 24-bit playback.

* Format conversion (transcoding).

Derivative work

* Unagi is the codename for the media playback engine derived from Winamp3 music core technologies as distributed with the AOL software or as an ActiveX download. It powers many AOL media projects (i.e video@netscape, video@aol etc).

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