I know there are a few people who remember the Llama… so you’ll be interested to see this.
https://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp59_9999_rc1_full_en-us.exe
Bugs being chased, features being updated…
Do you remember:
It really whips the Llama’s ass
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The sample is still there… LLama’s know their music
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I used to actually do that broadcast radio deal and leave the commercials Winamp had. That one always cracked me up.
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Very long time ago, I switched to foobar2000 because Winamp could not display non Latin text, so I am not objective. 
But it seems they have been hijacked by a new team of strange people when you look at how they present Winamp on winamp.com and this page:
Later this summer, the Winamp Foundation will put the original and iconic Winamp skin on auction, as a 1/1 NFT edition and afterward, Winamp will sell 20 NFT artworks made by 20 digital artists and derived from the original Winamp skin (“derivatives”).
Or did they sell their soul to that environment disaster blockchain nonsense fucking thing (NFT)?
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Winamp does handle non-latin text by default now. I can see Japanese, Greek, Ukrainian all fine. Just checked tags of a few of my tracks.
As to the NFT stuff - I think that can be safely ignored. Idiot marketing people are idiot marketing people. The team working on Winamp include some of the original coders and they are staying out of the NFT mess. No NFTs in Winamp. They can’t control the daft ideas of a parent company, but they do now have a proper future path again for the product.
I even noticed in the plans mention of possibly MusicBrainz used to replace Gracenote!
I am not trying to convert anyone from anything. This post was supposed to be positive for those people out there who like Llamas. They may now have weird Dutch owners, but after many years they are actually letting the Devs get on with the job. With a real future path planned.
The positive to me is having options for media players again. Competitions drives ideas. There would be no foobar2000 without someone getting annoyed at Winamp and staring that project. Just have to look at how bad things are when you see VLC and realise it STILL can’t do gapless playback!
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You’re right in all points, @IvanDobsky!
I was a Winamp user too.
Thanks for that topic!!
Unicode is what made me reluctantly switch to foobar2000 but after 2 weeks I was completely baffled by how incredibly perfect it was in general.
Everything was so simple and extensible.
Everything that came to mind was possible!
- I need Unicode? OK, just look and type
- I need to play my stuff in mono? OK, add that mono filter
- I need to copy paste text or to drag and drop stuff? OK, just do it
- I need mass tag? OK, just select them and Alt+Enter or right-click Properties
- I need global hotkeys? OK, check that Option and define whatever you want
- I need tagging my CD in drive or WAV files in Unicode? OK, just do it
- I need ripping CD? OK, right-click Convert
- I need bigger text so it’s readable? OK
- I need to search the web or MusicBrainz from files? OK, do want anything else, it’s all possible
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The only NFT Winamp Devs are doing is New Furry Tunes for Llamas. (I like your description better… lol 
)
Link to DJ Egg in the forum: Winamp & Shoutcast Forums - View Single Post - Winamp News
I have been using Winamp so long I still have my “Pro” key from the 1990s. And both Winamp and foobar2000 is what can be great about media players. Simple and feature rich. If the app don’t do what you need, write a plugin (just like MusicBrainz)
Your list of features I think I can mostly tick off in Winamp by default. This is what I mean about that common source of thinking. This is when devs wanted to give us all the features, not some dumbed down simple interface for dummies. These are multi-media toolboxes, not shop fronts.
Like when @dpr asked about format shifting and I clicked back on Winamp, selected a heap of tracks and just right clicked Send to → format convertor. It was just there, in the obvious place, where I expected to find it.
The main idea behind this release is to wake up the old Winamp, remove the stuff copyright to AOL/Gracenote/etc and replace with open source. Get all the features alive and working again.
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