After a 16-year Run, Winamp to Shut Down Next Month

Winamp is joining Alta Vista and Voodoo Extreme in the Internet graveyard. Sob.
By Kevin Parrish NOVEMBER 20, 2013

After serving music lovers for around 16 years, AOL confirmed on Wednesday that the Winamp website and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013, and the Winamp Media Player will no longer be available for download. Winamp was originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev, and first released as freeware back on April 21, 1997. ​

"Such a bummer. [AOL] had been trying to sell it for months. I even looked at it. Spinner was shut down first. It's the end of Music 1.0,” stated Venture capitalist Josh Felser, who founded Spinner.com, another online music property acquired by AOL at the same time as Winamp. He said that he seriously considered buying Winamp from AOL, but didn’t state why the purchase was never made.

“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 hire and first general manager of Winamp, told Ars Technica last year.

“I'm always hoping that they will come around and realize that they're killing [Winamp] and find a better way, but AOL always seems too bogged down with all of their internal politics to get anything done,” said Justin Frankel, Winamp's primary developer, in an interview last year.

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