{"slug": "winamp", "name": "Winamp", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "Classic Windows desktop music player, first released in 1997.", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 4.84, "rising": 1.02, "first": "2026-01-02", "latest": "2026-09-01", "why": "HN commenters like Winamp for its tiny memory footprint and quick loading, and because it remains a perfectly usable player, with even 90s versions running fine on Windows 11.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Lightweight", "Still works"], "caveat": "Development status", "short_quote": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.winamp.com", "pricing": "free", "aliases": ["Winamp", "WinAmp"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Winamp for its tiny memory footprint and quick loading,", "cites": [{"id": 792457760, "item_id": 49528610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528610", "by": "toast0", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB.", "excerpt": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB. Even that seems pretty high, but whatever, but given y'all are spending hundreds of mbs, I think I'm ok. Yes, spotify has features my subscription music service doesn't have... but the one I use lets me stream with Winamp.", "context": "", "use_case": "music streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 790970944, "item_id": 49435684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435684", "by": "steveBK123", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp in 1998 took about 2 seconds to load.", "excerpt": "I do worry that at this point it's no longer just Apple's problem to solve. They need to figure out a way to take the rest of the industry with it. Maybe if their standards are high enough everyone else will look bad by comparison. My daily driver personal machines are incredible pieces of kit, but everything is always getting worse because majority of software is some SaaS living in the cloud, or even if on-desktop ", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro"}]}, {"text": " and because it remains a perfectly usable player, with even 90s versions running fine on Windows 11.", "cites": [{"id": 785872513, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WinAmp has been dead for centuries but it's still a perfectly valid player", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "music player", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 743485921, "item_id": 46467870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467870", "by": "lossyalgo", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which works great with WinAmp (even the old versions from the 90s still run fine in Windows 11)", "excerpt": "2nd hand CD players are abundant and cheap. New CD players are also rather abundant and cheap (and also have burning capability + DVD read/write) and are available e.g. on Amazon - some are USB, some are standalone units (like we all bought in the 90s). There are tons of options, and as the article says, plenty of people are still buying CDs. Otherwise I totally agree about aesthetics of vinyl. I have a rather large ", "context": "", "use_case": "internet radio playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player"}]}, {"text": " The main caveat is that it is seen as long dead,", "cites": [{"id": 785872513, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WinAmp has been dead for centuries but it's still a perfectly valid player", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "music player", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}]}, {"text": " and Linux users had to rely on clones like xmms and bmp that also faded away.", "cites": [{"id": 759994097, "item_id": 47499631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47499631", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp was pretty cool.", "excerpt": "Winamp was pretty cool. When I switched to Linux, many years ago, I wanted to have winamp too. I think I used bmp for a while until it died; before that xmms but that one also sort of died. Meanwhile some other GUI showed up, I forgot the name. I kind of gave up on winamp, mostly because my use cases shifted. I went to mplayer, then mpv, and now I am too used to using mpv for literally anything related to audio and v", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Lightweight", "summary": "Commenters cite very low memory use and fast startup compared with modern streaming apps.", "quotes": [{"id": 792457760, "item_id": 49528610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528610", "by": "toast0", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB.", "excerpt": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB. Even that seems pretty high, but whatever, but given y'all are spending hundreds of mbs, I think I'm ok. Yes, spotify has features my subscription music service doesn't have... but the one I use lets me stream with Winamp.", "context": "", "use_case": "music streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 790970944, "item_id": 49435684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435684", "by": "steveBK123", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp in 1998 took about 2 seconds to load.", "excerpt": "I do worry that at this point it's no longer just Apple's problem to solve. They need to figure out a way to take the rest of the industry with it. Maybe if their standards are high enough everyone else will look bad by comparison. My daily driver personal machines are incredible pieces of kit, but everything is always getting worse because majority of software is some SaaS living in the cloud, or even if on-desktop ", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro"}]}, {"label": "Still works", "summary": "Old versions still run on Windows 11 and it remains a valid player today.", "quotes": [{"id": 743485921, "item_id": 46467870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467870", "by": "lossyalgo", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which works great with WinAmp (even the old versions from the 90s still run fine in Windows 11)", "excerpt": "2nd hand CD players are abundant and cheap. New CD players are also rather abundant and cheap (and also have burning capability + DVD read/write) and are available e.g. on Amazon - some are USB, some are standalone units (like we all bought in the 90s). There are tons of options, and as the article says, plenty of people are still buying CDs. Otherwise I totally agree about aesthetics of vinyl. I have a rather large ", "context": "", "use_case": "internet radio playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player"}, {"id": 785872513, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WinAmp has been dead for centuries but it's still a perfectly valid player", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "music player", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}]}, {"label": "Nostalgic appeal", "summary": "Fondly remembered as a cool player that people missed after switching platforms.", "quotes": [{"id": 759994097, "item_id": 47499631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47499631", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp was pretty cool.", "excerpt": "Winamp was pretty cool. When I switched to Linux, many years ago, I wanted to have winamp too. I think I used bmp for a while until it died; before that xmms but that one also sort of died. Meanwhile some other GUI showed up, I forgot the name. I kind of gave up on winamp, mostly because my use cases shifted. I went to mplayer, then mpv, and now I am too used to using mpv for literally anything related to audio and v", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"}, {"id": 782958240, "item_id": 48934890, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934890", "by": "myself248", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I tabbed over to Winamp to change the music", "excerpt": "I love this idea! Yeeeeears ago, I was in the middle of some late-night hacking session, hanging with friends on IRC, and I had shared my screen via VNC so they could watch/help. (ISTR I had found the UART port on some piece of embedded hardware and we were muddling our way through U-boot incantations or something.) At some point, I tabbed over to Winamp to change the music, which everyone saw, and one of the crew wa", "context": "", "use_case": "playing music", "switched_from": "", "story": "The lost joy of music piracy"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Development status", "summary": "Commenters describe Winamp as long dead.", "quotes": [{"id": 785872513, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WinAmp has been dead for centuries but it's still a perfectly valid player", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "music player", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}]}, {"label": "No Linux version", "summary": "A Linux user turned to Winamp-like clones such as xmms and bmp, which also died.", "quotes": [{"id": 759994097, "item_id": 47499631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47499631", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp was pretty cool.", "excerpt": "Winamp was pretty cool. When I switched to Linux, many years ago, I wanted to have winamp too. I think I used bmp for a while until it died; before that xmms but that one also sort of died. Meanwhile some other GUI showed up, I forgot the name. I kind of gave up on winamp, mostly because my use cases shifted. I went to mplayer, then mpv, and now I am too used to using mpv for literally anything related to audio and v", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"}]}], "who": [], "tags": ["for Windows users", "for low-resource setups", "for music streaming"], "use_cases": ["music playback", "music streaming", "music player", "playing music", "internet radio playback"], "compared": [{"slug": "foobar2000", "name": "foobar2000", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "vlc", "name": "VLC", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "spotify", "name": "Spotify", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "shoutcast", "name": "Shoutcast", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49517448", "title": "Fastpotify", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433450", "title": "New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49113338", "title": "CodePen 2.0", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48930454", "title": "The lost joy of music piracy", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47494821", "title": "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454944", "title": "50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 792457760, "item_id": 49528610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49528610", "by": "toast0", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB.", "excerpt": "I run actual Winamp for my music streaming, and windows task manager claims it's using 4.1 MB. Even that seems pretty high, but whatever, but given y'all are spending hundreds of mbs, I think I'm ok. Yes, spotify has features my subscription music service doesn't have... but the one I use lets me stream with Winamp.", "context": "", "use_case": "music streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fastpotify"}, {"id": 790970944, "item_id": 49435684, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435684", "by": "steveBK123", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp in 1998 took about 2 seconds to load.", "excerpt": "I do worry that at this point it's no longer just Apple's problem to solve. They need to figure out a way to take the rest of the industry with it. Maybe if their standards are high enough everyone else will look bad by comparison. My daily driver personal machines are incredible pieces of kit, but everything is always getting worse because majority of software is some SaaS living in the cloud, or even if on-desktop ", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro"}, {"id": 785872513, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "WinAmp has been dead for centuries but it's still a perfectly valid player", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "music player", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 782958240, "item_id": 48934890, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934890", "by": "myself248", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I tabbed over to Winamp to change the music", "excerpt": "I love this idea! Yeeeeears ago, I was in the middle of some late-night hacking session, hanging with friends on IRC, and I had shared my screen via VNC so they could watch/help. (ISTR I had found the UART port on some piece of embedded hardware and we were muddling our way through U-boot incantations or something.) At some point, I tabbed over to Winamp to change the music, which everyone saw, and one of the crew wa", "context": "", "use_case": "playing music", "switched_from": "", "story": "The lost joy of music piracy"}, {"id": 759994097, "item_id": 47499631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47499631", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Winamp was pretty cool.", "excerpt": "Winamp was pretty cool. When I switched to Linux, many years ago, I wanted to have winamp too. I think I used bmp for a while until it died; before that xmms but that one also sort of died. Meanwhile some other GUI showed up, I forgot the name. I kind of gave up on winamp, mostly because my use cases shifted. I went to mplayer, then mpv, and now I am too used to using mpv for literally anything related to audio and v", "context": "", "use_case": "music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"}, {"id": 743485921, "item_id": 46467870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467870", "by": "lossyalgo", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which works great with WinAmp (even the old versions from the 90s still run fine in Windows 11)", "excerpt": "2nd hand CD players are abundant and cheap. New CD players are also rather abundant and cheap (and also have burning capability + DVD read/write) and are available e.g. on Amazon - some are USB, some are standalone units (like we all bought in the 90s). There are tons of options, and as the article says, plenty of people are still buying CDs. Otherwise I totally agree about aesthetics of vinyl. I have a rather large ", "context": "", "use_case": "internet radio playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player"}]}