Winamp2-js is a web-based version of audio player Winamp
Winamp2-js is a web-based version of audio player Winamp which you can access directly or host locally or on your own web space to play audio files using it.
Winamp is still a popular audio player even though its development stopped a long time ago. While Winamp fans hope for a revival of the player, the player has changed companies more frequently than it has been released in an updated version.
AOL sold Winamp to Radionomy back in 2014, and Vivendi became a major Radionomy stakeholder at the end of 2015. The "more info soon" page has not changed in that time and while there has been a rumor of a Winamp Beta version in 2016, nothing has been released since then.
Winamp2-js
Winamp2-js is a web-based reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 using HTML and JavaScript. You can open a demo page here to check out the interface and player.
The core functionality is included but it is pretty much a work in progress. You can drag and drop music files to the playlist area and play these audio files using the interface. The add buttons work as well in the interface so that you may use these instead to load files into the playlist.
It may not be obvious right away, but you can drag the player interface around on the screen, and even double it in size with the shortcut Ctrl-D. This separates the playback controls from the equalizer and the playlist so that you may move each around individually.
The web-based version supports other features. The equalizer, volume and balance, and bar/line mode visualization modules work already, and you can even load skins to change the design of the player.
Other features of Winamp don't work yet, however. You cannot use the player to play URLs (so no Internet radio), or load playlists.
One interesting option that you have is to save the web page to load it locally instead, or upload it to a web server for to access it from there instead.
You find the source on gitHub.
Closing Words
Winamp2-js is not the first implementation of Winamp on the Web but it is one that gets a lot of things right. It looks like an exact copy of the classic audio player and may appeal to users because of that.
As far as use is concerned, the only use case I can think of is to use it in environments that are locked down so that you may not use software audio players at all. It still requires that you have access to local audio files though. (via Deskmodder).
Now You: Which audio player do you use mostly nowadays?
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Fb2k
I receive the following notification,
“Your browser does not support the features we need.
Try using the most recent version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge.”
Firefox 58.0.2. Most likely settings here which don’t comply with the site’s requirements.
it needs dom webaudio enabled, a feature also potentially usable for tracking
It’s true there’s a way to abuse the WebAudio API, I thought that privacy.resistFingerprinting was already dealing with it but not sure.
**Recites the Pants incantation**
Anyway, the Winamp demo works with privacy.resistFingerprinting as long as Canvas is allowed.
Noted. Thanks P. M. Claarke.
I won’t modify privacy settings for the sake of what remains in a way a proof of concept, a code exercise with no pertinence from a user’s point of view, from mine anyway. Why make things simple when they can be complicated is a worthy question for coders and as always with stuff which seems useless at first may have longer-term benefits. I’ll wait for the benefits.
Works here. But, as you say Mike, it’s a WIP.
I am still a fan of the latest player. I like the tiny interface of the base skin. It really doesn’t need any updates. It does everything I need it to do with a couple of extensions. Enhancer is by far the best extension IMHO. I got rid of library, modern skins and other features I don’t use.
Kudos to those working on it. However, I think it is pointless to have to open a browser to play music when you may just be working on a Word document.
@pHROZEN gHOST: “However, I think it is pointless to have to open a browser to play music when you may just be working on a Word document.”
Yes, this is my problem with most web-based apps like this.
I still use Winamp. – v5.666
I’d be willing to change, but nothing else I’ve seen has been as good, let alone better.
We’re still using Winamp v5.666 Build 3516 (x86) with the MMD3 skin as an audio player and we love it. It does everything we need and does it good.
The link to download it can be found here http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=373755
“Winamp, it kicks the Llama’s ass!”
It WHIPS the llama’s ass, Winamp is edgy shit.
I haven’t used Winamp in 15 years. I used to love it, had a great wooden skin and all. At the time I didn’t quite understand what Winamp was really doing (does it reek the love as us ?) for lack of being used to spoken English. Right before loading the demo this article links to, I was trying to decipher what it said from the sound in my memory from 15 years ago, hoping the sheep sound was still featured today to let me solve that mystery.
This time around, it was as understandable as native language. Winamp was whipping the llama’s ass all along. The world can end, I think all loose ends are tied now.
It’s probably just a web audio player that is skinned to look like Winamp 2.
But why does this project exist? It’s totally unnecessary :)
I still have the latest winamp installed, but since a couple of months I’ve also use Musicbee a couple of times…
Musicbee is excellent. Here is my review: https://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/21/musicbee-review-the-ultimate-music-player/
“Which audio player do you use mostly nowadays?”
Kodi, mostly.
I run a Kodi server at home to serve up my music collection, so I can play it through a high-quality sound system as well as stream to any machine connected to my LAN or (when roaming) through my VPN. Which end-point player I use depends a lot on which machine I’m using. If playing through my stereo, then I’m using Kodi directly. Everywhere else, I’m usually streaming or playing cached copies through my phone, using the Kodi client Yatse.
With same type of UI and same functionality as Winamp, XMPlay is very good for its incredible small size ~300k. It has same features as Winamp, some nice extra settings, it’s portable, it can use same plugins as Winamp.
Still nothing beats Winamp as a simple music player. I still use it everyday. It would be interesting to see more features added to this JS version.
I’ve used Winamp for at least 8 years and I still use it (everyday) in W7.
Several years ago (when Winamp development was cancelled) I tried MusicBee, but I couldn’t get it to use my Winamp playlist.
Finally when I Dragged & Dropped” the playlist on to the interface, instead of playing the playlist, it moved all 10,000+ mp3s to a new location.
Needless to say, I’ve never tried to use it again.
This cracks me up. I made something like this in Flash back in 2009. It took almost 10 years, but HTML finally caught up!
https://mariani.life/projects/flashamp/
What a waste that has been, even endangered the web platform as a whole. At least it’s back on track now. (Still needs full multi-threading support, which Flash didn’t have but which proprietary apps do.)
A waste? it was a godsend when it was popular. The browsers have only recently started to follow a standard and not be all over the place. Many years ago, it was a horrible mess, that’s why jQuery was so popular. Flash made it so one could program ONCE and deploy EVERYWHERE. I didn’t have to worry about compatibility because it just worked. It was like the Apple of the web. Not to mention, it’s taken almost a decade to catch up to where flash was in 2009. And flash did have multi-thread support btw, It has workers about 7 years ago ( https://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/system/Worker.html ). Flash has a bad wrap because of bad developers and Adobe’s poor attention on security. But bad developers can break anything.
The waste was to kill Flash in its tracks as it was experiencing another tech improvement (3D and improved language), without the web having any replacement ready. That stalled web tech for at least five years, probably more, during which proprietary apps over which users have no control almost took over as the main way to use the network.
> Flash has a bad wrap because of bad developers and Adobe’s poor attention on security. But bad developers can break anything.
Flash had a very good reputation until the political shenanigans that led to its premature murder.
Ah. then to that, yes I completely agree. When I saw Steve Jobs and his “thoughts on flash” i realized my career was over and I had to change. I didn’t realize one guy could kill an entire industry like that. But yes, completely agree with you, a huge setback.
Still using Winamp v. 5.666.
I use also Streamwriter, a free and portable player/recorder for net radios, it has some 25.000 streams in its list
I thinks it’s cool!
If anything, for nostalgia purposes.
I did save it locally (works fine in Firefox) and downloaded the source to play with it later.
I’ve loaded saved streams to it. I like the EQ.
foobar2000 is my default, but I’m going to play around with this for the heck of it.
Nice find.
Thanks
I used Winamp like 15 years ago but changed to MusicBee as my music collection grew. In my view MusicBee is superior for larger music collections on PC’s when you consider UI, flexibility, speed and sturdiness.
Lately I have changed my setup to Raspberry Pi with DAC HAT running RuneAudio (Arch Linux). Much better music quality and with multi room streaming, but the UI is still lacking compared to MusicBee.
But Winamp is certainly still useful in many scenarios.