Radionomy plans to release a completely new Winamp version next year

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 16, 2018
Updated • Oct 17, 2018
Music and Video
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16

Radionomy, the company that bought the Winamp application, web services, and technology from AOL in 2014, revealed that it is working on a brand new version of Winamp that it plans to release in 2019.

The company plans to release Winamp 5.8, the recently leaked version of the next "classic" version of the media player, later this week. The release won't hold many surprises for users who downloaded the leaked version previously as it won't be that different from the leak even though the leak dates back to 2016.

Winamp 5.8 removes all Pro components from Winamp, replaced proprietary codecs with open codecs, removed DRM support, and enabled Windows Audio support among other things. The new version fixes lots of bugs that crept up over the years and should run better for the majority of users who upgrade Winamp to the new version once it gets released officially.

More surprising than the upcoming release of Winamp after a period of four years without any release is that Radionomy plans to release a completely new version of Winamp in 2019. Winamp 6.0 was confirmed by Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Radionomy recently in a Techcrunch interview.

The next major Winamp version would stay true to the legacy of Winamp but would provide "a more complete listening experience". Saboundjian wants Winamp to become the go-to player for all things audio; from classic local audio files and Internet Radio streams to cloud-based service integrations and podcasts. But turning Winamp into a universal player for all things audio is just one side of the medal.

Winamp has been a desktop player traditionally but that is about to change with the release of the next version of Winamp in 2019. Radionomy plans to release Winamp for Android and iOS in 2019 to make it the universal music player on all devices that users use to consume audio.

What I see today is you have to jump from one player to another player or aggregator if you want to listen to a radio station, to a podcast player if you want to listen to a podcast — this, to me, is not the final experience,” he explained. It’s all audio, and it’s all searchable in one fashion or another. So why isn’t it all in one place?

Saboundjian was tight-lipped about how that universal player would look like and if Winamp would integrate major services such as Spotify.

Closing Words

The release of Winamp 5.8 will please a lot of fans of the media player and may even bring back some that moved on to use a different media player on the desktop. It remains to be seen if Radionomy manages to release Winamp 6.0 for the desktop and mobile devices in 2019. Veteran Winamp users may remember the company's promise to release a new version of Winamp in 2016 but did not release one until, well. next week.

Now You: What would you like to see in Winamp 6.0.

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Radionomy plans to release a completely new Winamp version next year
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Radionomy plans to release a completely new Winamp version next year
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Radionomy, the company that bought the Winamp application, web services, and technology from AOL in 2014, revealed that it is working on a brand new version of Winamp that it plans to release in 2019.
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Comments

  1. John Doe 101 said on December 9, 2018 at 10:40 am
    Reply

    BTW, thee best Winampskinner is imho: https://www.deviantart.com/victhor/art/cPro2-Grafito-by-Veroka-
    and-Victhor-673050048

    The guy is awesome, very good Design and Functionality, love it.

    Using new Version 5.8, cool Bugfixes.

  2. Farmers said on October 21, 2018 at 12:08 pm
    Reply

    Ah, I didn’t realise it was them who now owned it. They run one of my favourite radio stations.

  3. EP said on October 19, 2018 at 5:49 pm
    Reply

    Winamp 5.8 is officially released on their web site:

    http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=453675

    1. Farmers said on October 21, 2018 at 12:06 pm
      Reply

      It’s listed as a beta.

  4. sp808 said on October 19, 2018 at 10:48 am
    Reply

    Who needs it, when we have fb2k?
    Only for those how what to get back to times when winamp2 kicked the lamer’s ass.

  5. Benjamin Morgentau said on October 17, 2018 at 2:32 pm
    Reply

    Winamp should integrate or use as it’s base the engine of the venerable DeliPlayer 2.03 since no player had that high a sound quality on Windows Systems… still runs on Windows 10 after all these years.

  6. Clairvaux said on October 17, 2018 at 2:23 pm
    Reply

    I have hated Winamp’s interface as soon as I saw it, ages ago. Ugly and childish. However, the concept of integrating everything audio under one roof is a very good one. Let’s see what they make of it.

  7. Anders said on October 17, 2018 at 12:15 pm
    Reply

    Whatever.

  8. Lindsay said on October 17, 2018 at 9:49 am
    Reply

    I sure don’t want to see another Winamp 3

  9. Jozsef said on October 17, 2018 at 8:02 am
    Reply

    As long as the tiny interface is considered an integral part of what Winamp is, it won’t be suitable for me. I know there is a very nice skin that is significantly larger but I still have to squint at it, so if they will still consider the option of a normal resizable interface to be out of the question going forward then that’s going to be that.

  10. Ivan said on October 17, 2018 at 7:21 am
    Reply

    It won’t be as good as foobar2k, but they have the nostalgia going for them, so there’s that.

  11. Simakuutio said on October 17, 2018 at 6:45 am
    Reply

    Using winamp daily to listen radiostreams and sometimes mediafiles and honestly not so interested about this new version because it won’t add anything useful in my point of view to my listening experience. I think they will force users to see larger UI etc crap in that player, my use case is that when player is playing, I don’t even see that player anywhere, it’s hidden from view to I can focus to other things while listening music or whatever content I want to listen.

    This version I’m using, works flawlessly, plays everything and doesn’t bug. So for me, nothing to be seen here :)

  12. Mike S. said on October 17, 2018 at 4:40 am
    Reply

    I’m still using v2.6 from Y2K. Works fine in Win10.

    Note that’s for music, for video I go with VLC.

  13. Vue said on October 17, 2018 at 2:18 am
    Reply

    Yeeeaaah. I’ll believe when I see it.

  14. Anonymous said on October 17, 2018 at 12:39 am
    Reply

    This is old news. I read this before like 1 year ago.

  15. pHROZEN gHOST said on October 17, 2018 at 12:25 am
    Reply

    I am still using Winamp 5.666 as my main music player on my desktop. It does all I want even though I stripped it down (no music library or modern skins). I did add enhancer and time restore and autoplay.

    I can’t see anything newer being better for me. But I will give it a try.

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