Winamp was a very popular music player in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was one of the first programs capable of read MP3 files on the computer, and it had a very minimalist interface, as well as customizable. A very light program that, before the era of streaming, was installed on all computers and always running in the background.
This music player was owned by AOL, who, in the late 2000s, shelved and abandoned him. In 2013, he even sold it to a radio company, radionomy, for an amount that we never got to know. Finally, this company, like many others, ended up closing down as it could not be profitable, and this player completely disappeared from the face of the earth.
But his return is closer than ever.
You can now download a new version of Winamp
The last update of this program that came to see the light of day was the 5.8 beta, published in 2018. Since then, nothing more has been known about this program, until rumors about its possible return appeared last year. of this player. Rumors that today have come true.
A few hours ago the first Release Candidate for Winamp 5.9 appeared on the web. And, in addition, it comes with very interesting changes, such as Windows 11 compatibilitysupport for new audio formats (vp8, https://streams, playback of .itz, .mdz, .s3z and .xmz), a podcast section and many, many corrections and improvements.
This new Winamp 5.9 RC1 has removed support for Windows XP and Vista, being Windows 7 SP1 the minimum operating system on which it will work. Some of the oldest skins of this program have also been removed as they are impossible to fit into the new operating systems. In addition, the jump from VS2008 to VS2019 has brought with it some errors and problems in the visualizations and in the general use of the program. These problems should be fixed with the release of version 5.9.1, which we hope will not take 5 years to arrive. Therefore, for now, we will have to live with them.
If you want to reinstall this music player, and test its new features and improvements first-hand, we can download this new Release Candidate from the program’s official forums. Of course, we must bear in mind that it is not yet a final version, so we will have problems, both those already mentioned, and others that have not been detected.
We hope to see the final version of this classic music player soon.