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Goodbye Winamp


After 15 years of llama whipping AOL shuts down Winamp for good Ars Technica

Source: http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/...

Venture capitalist Josh Felser, who founded Spinner.com, another online music property that was acquired by AOL at the same time as Winamp, told Ars: "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"

Felser added that he recently seriously considered buying Winamp from AOL, too.

"I spoke with the [corporate development] folks at AOL a couple times. Even reached out to [Winamp creator] Justin [Frankel] who was totally not interested. I think we talked about $5 million with some trailing equity."

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People were still using Winamp?!

Ars wrote an extensive feature on the rise and fall of Winamp in June 2012, detailing AOL’s mismanagement of the property since its dotcom-boom acquisition. As we reported then, Winamp continued to receive updates and make a tiny amount of money for AOL throughout the last 15 years. AOL even released the first Android version in 2010 and a Mac version in 2011.

While the company has declined to release official figures, former employees who worked on Winamp estimate its current revenue at around $6 million annually. And Winamp still has an estimated user base of millions worldwide, a small fraction of which live in the United States. All of that appears to be water under the bridge now.

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