Once-popular Winamp media player to shut down on December 20

It truly is the end of an era. After 15 years of being one of the most popular media players across the world, Winamp will be shutting shop on December 20 this year. The shutdown will affect not just the website, Winamp.com, but also the Winamp Media players and associated web services.

AOL announced that the service will be shutting down this year. Winamp’s parent company, Nullsoft, was acquired by AOL back in 1999. The service was started in 1997 by two college students Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev and found popularity as MP3 file sharing gathered speed in the early 2000s.

Goodbye, Winamp. Thanks for the memories

On Windows, Winamp had become the go-to music player for an entire generation of music listeners. Recently, the company also released a Mac and Android versions of the app. They, however, did not become half as popular as its earlier avatar with customisable skins did. Sadly enough, the announcement came in form of an abrupt, small post on the Winamp website that urged users to update their existing Winamp players before the last day.

Ars Technica reports that the announcement of the shut down was confirmed by Geno Yoham, Winamp’s General Director since 2008. Neither Yoham nor AOL has given any reason as to why Winamp will be laid to rest next month. Ars, however, has reported that Winamp has been struggling since the past few years, with blame being put on mismanagement. Former employees of Winamp estimate its current revenue to be around $6 million annually. In 2012, Rob Lord, the first hire and General Manager of Winamp had said, “There’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition.”

While all of this is the thing of the past, you still have about less than a month to head onto Winamp’s website one final time and download the media player to live on within your systems. Don’t forget to pick up some funky looking skins for old times’ sake! Because, “Winamp, it really whips the llama’s ass.”