The new Winamp does not play local music anymore, as it is a website music service
Just yesterday, we told you that Winamp was preparing to launch a new audio player, called Winamp. The new version of Winamp is now available and most existing Winamp users may be surprised to learn that it is a web-based application.
Head over to Winamp, create an account, and start using the service on the Web. It is quite the leap from a desktop audio player that has attracted a large fan base thanks to its features and customization options, to a web-based player.
Users may have questions, including how they get their music collection to play in the player, or which features are new or have been removed. Since this new version of Winamp is web-based, it is necessary that users create an account to get started.
The first thing that users may notice after signing-in to their account for the first time is that the new Winamp player does not support integrating a local music library or online library of audio files to an account.
This leaves a very small selection of artists, those who have signed up already to promote their music using Winamp, and the streaming options podcasts and radio stations.
A click on Fanzone and the selection of Podcasts or Radios displays a long list of available options. The Radios tab displays filters for genres and location. Select Oldies or Hip-Hop-Rap, and you get a selection of radio stations that stream the selected type of music non-stop.
The listings are sorted alphabetically only and each entry is listed with an icon and its name, or part of it, only. This is a problem, as it makes the listings difficult to navigate and explore.
A click on a station or podcasts displays a profile page. There is a play button to tune right in, and a join option to add the station or podcast to the library.
Podcasts are categorized as well, and you may display a list of available finance, music, or education podcasts. There is also a language filter for several popular languages.
The profile pages of podcasts appear to have more content and information. The play and join buttons are available, but there is also an about page and a list of available episodes.
The search helps find useful radio stations and podcasts, but music is way too limited to be of any use. It remains to be seen if Winamp has the pull to drive thousands of artists to the platform to populate it.
Closing Words
The new Winamp is totally different from the old. It is a web-based player that can't play local music. The idea to create an incentive for artists to publish their content on Winamp is not a novel idea, but Winamp might have more pull than other solutions that attempted it before the company. For now, it is a web-based podcast and radio player.
What about the standalone desktop player? Winamp users have used it for years without official support, and this won't change. Whether it is going to be abandoned or if development continues remains to be seen.
Now You: What is your take on the new Winamp?
I’m still using Winamp 5.666. It does not need internet access.
It has a library to organize and an equalizer to tweak the sound.
It plays music. That’s all I need.
I do not need nor want it to do anything else.
This release is a web-based player for only online content.. ?
No Thanks ! dont need that!
However , i did read on the winamp forum that an update for the normal installed winamp 9.21 is coming soon!
Even before it is released, this thing is dead. In essence, they simply bought the rights to the name Winamp in 2014 and then released a completely unrelated product. I will continue to use the old version which is far superior.
Just use old versions of winamp. Web base, sigh. I already use mixcloud and soundcloud which is the best. They need to ditch this and quick and give us a desktop app. Seems like everything has changed and changing for the worse. Why ruined something if it was great already?
What a waste. I won’t even entertain using it.
Destined to fail.
> “What is your take on the new Winamp?”
Uhm… incomplete, online only based junk, *self edited by my fingers for thought expletives*
Overall not impressed. If I wanted a web player I’d go to one of the many already mentioned although Linux has several offline/online products already like Clementine.
Thanks for the update Martin
P.S. The “Desktop” download link is currently at the bottom of the page… albeit it hasn’t been tried/installed in a Windows VM yet.
Not the Winamp I’ve been waiting for. Had high hopes for the new version, found out there is no new version. Why do they even call it Winamp Player if there is no player part at all? Nobody calls Spotify or something like that a player, right? Disappointed
WinAmp was a thing. This is no WinAmp at all. Foobar happened.
This isn’t Winamp. They can slap that branding on it, but that isn’t what this is.
Long live XMPlay. It’s like classic Winamp, but probably even smaller. And it is (just) a music player.
Well, if it can’t be employed to playback local music libraries there doesn’t seem to be much point in it. I’ll just continue using VLC which is just as good.
Industry really really wants local media playback to go away. From the industry’s perspective, you can’t charge people subscriptions for such functionality, and you can’t yank content away from the consumer after selling it to them, either. Boooo!
Well actually you can. https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1657022591
Anyway, some day there will be a 100GB installation of Windows that can’t play an mp3 file from your local disk. Of course if that file instead happens to be coming over the network from an approved service, which has also perhaps paid Microsoft the appropriate licensing fees to reach consumers in the Windows walled garden that Microsoft has so desperately been trying to transform Windows into ever since the Iphone showed them how, then it will play just fine.
Doesn’t support local music means a complete failure and will go nowhere.
WinAmp is an old friend, evoking it feeds way-back thoughts and many hours of musical pleasure.
I abandoned it years ago, rediscovered here its perpetuation and now its availability as a web-based application.
I won’t be using it given it “does not support integrating a local music library or online library of audio files to an account.”.
Why would I limit myself to a “very small selection of artists, those who have signed up already to promote their music using Winamp, and the streaming options podcasts and radio stations.”?
For home, local music I use :
1- Winyl Player 3.3.1, no longer updated, supports web radios as well
[https://winyl-player.github.io/]
[https://github.com/winyl-player/winyl/releases]
2- Silverjuke 2.74 – April 2009 (license) – Haven’t updated! Runs perfectly well (Win7).
[https://www.silverjuke.net/en/]
For Web radios via Firefox :
‘Radio player’ extension by al3k_popov [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/radio_player_/]
to which I add Web Radios streaming urls I most of the time discover on ‘FMstream’ [http://fmstream.org/] which plays itself and provides clearly the streaming urls.
I’m sure many talented new artists appreciate a dedicated platform to share their creations but in my experience — Yes : I’m prepared to tough disagreements — few of the new talents I discover have an authentic personality and most carry on typical musical archetypes we know already given we hear them everywhere over and over from supermarkets’ background music to radio stations. Some undergrounds and some Web radios provide fresh musical air, but few. So its a matter of traveling on the web or in life and discovering, but not, IMHO, having a few played out on a whatever musical web application. That is only IMveryHO :=)
Whoa, WINYL! I used that one as well, and a few others like Spider Player and Xion Audio Player..Back when my music collection was very modest. Today it’s only MusicBee for me, it handles a +25k albums collection wonderfully.
Wow, such a waste. We waited 9 years for this? Artists have to pay to use this junk? I would go to https://webamp.org if I wanted to use Winamp in my browser and WACUP if I wanted the desktop version.
Hi Martin,
Actually, the desktop version of the Winamp player is available on the Winamp website, here: https://www.winamp.com/downloads/ and it is the version 591_10029
Just thought you should know about it.
They have removed the download option, the download link is just the main page now.
Your Wrong Sebastian Weber this is the old version from last year.
Look to the specifics those are absolutely the same, think size, etc.
No Paul(us), you are wrong.
There is a new desktop version. It is version 5.9.2 released 4/4/2023 to a small group of testers. It should be released generally soon.
The new desktop version contains plug-ins that will allow access to the web-based features for those who want them. It will be confusing since the web-based app and the desktop app are both called Winamp.