Iconic Winamp player to be discontinued

Iconic nineties media player Winamp will shut down on December 20, with AOL announcing the desktop player will no longer be available for download.

“Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013,” reads a rather depressing note posted on the Winamp website.

“Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.”

First released in 1997, Winamp became the first digital MP3 player to gain wide use and fostered a new format for listening to and managing a library of music. So successful was Winamp that in 1999 AOL acquired the software for $80 million and drew notables like Ian Rogers (of Beat’s Daisy service) as executives.

The media player is also known for the bizarre, llama-related demo MP3 that played when you installed the software onto your desktop.

The software was largely drowned out by the launch of Apple’s iPod and iTunes which claims to have 575 million user accounts and adds 500 000 new users everyday.

“There’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,” Rob Lord the first general manager of Winamp, told Ars Technica last year.