Download WinAmp 097b

Winamp is one of the most popular software choices for playing media, both music and video. Winamp (or "Win Advanced Multimedia Products") was originally released in 1997, and has been carried forward today through Version 5 by Nullsoft, the same company that originally developed it. Winamp (starting with Version 3 in 2002) easily became the most recognized media playback software application on the internet for Windows; it helped pioneer wide plugin usage (to extend functionality of the application), skinnability (to change the look of the program), and more.

Winamp 2.95 remained in concurrent development with Winamp 3 for quite a while, as 3 lacked compatibility (and even functionality) with many things users had come to love in Winamp 2: many Winamp 2 only skins, various plugins, and SHOUTcast internet radio support.

Luckily, the Nullsoft team addressed these concerns with Winamp 5, the followup to Winamp 3. The team half-jokingly skipped Winamp 4, citing peoples' concerns about the disparate features between Winamp 2 and Winamp 3, and so they decided to release something that combined the strengths of the two (2+3=5).

Winamp 5 comes with a variety of skins and a much fuller feature set than any of the previous major versions. It supports music ripping and CD burning, and (Pro-version only) also features MP3 encoding, enhanced Windows Vista Aero support, among a few other neat things.

From Winamp 5.2 and onwards, Winamp fully supports iPod synchronization - crucial to many people with mobile media devices these days.

The Nullsoft team released their 10th Anniversary Edition of their software in 2007; Winamp has been now been around for 10 years and is still going strong. It has strongly influenced the direction many other popular media players have taken: iTunes, XMMS, and especially Foobar2000 have all borrowed from the Winamp model. Who knows what direction the Winamp team will take it next?