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Winamp line in hdmi4/1/2024 ![]() In June of 1999, AOL acquired Nullsoft (the company behind Winamp) for $80 million. Our story’s ending begins with a buyout, like many other 90s tech stories. Part of the appeal came from the community: a plugin and skin ecosystem allowed designers and developers to customize things in surprising ways, and music nerds loved having that kind of control. It quickly became a hit, despite only having a four-person team behind it. Winamp was lightweight, customizable, and made listening to music easier than any player that came before it. Where did it go? And could you use it today, if you wanted to? Let’s dig in and see what we can find. RELATED: Re-Live 90s Computing In Your Browser Right Now Winamp rode that wave, growing until it had 90 million users, only to become irrelevant. This, combined with early file sharing networks like Napster, changed the way people discovered and listened to music. Winamp wasn’t the first PC music player, but it did make it easy to create a playlist: drag files over to the playlist window and start listening. Winamp (Windows Advanced Multimedia Products) came out on April 21, 1997-back when listening to music on computers was a novel concept, and most people didn’t know what “MP3” meant.
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