http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/after-15-years-of-llama-whipping-aol
-shuts-down-winamp-for-good/
After 15 years of llama-whipping, AOL shuts down Winamp for good
Former Winamp employees blame AOL mismanagement that began over a decade
ago.
by Cyrus Farivar - Nov 20 2013, 1:18pm CST
AOL
Winamp, the storied MP3 player bought by AOL in June 1999 for over $80
million, is set to shut down in exactly one month. According to a post that
went live Wednesday at 12:00 pm Eastern Time on the Winamp website:
Winamp.com and associated Web services will no longer be available past
December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be
available for download. Please download the latest version before that date.
See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for
supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.
On Wednesday, Ars confirmed the announcement with Geno Yoham, Winamp's
general director since October 2008. He declined immediate comment but said
that he would try to arrange a future interview.
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.
"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," Rob Lord, the first hire and first general
manager of Winamp, told Ars in 2012.
Justin Frankel, Winamp's primary developer, seemed to concur in an interview
he gave to BetaNews. (He declined to be interviewed by Ars in 2012.) "I'm
always hoping that they will come around and realize that they're killing
[Winamp] and find a better way, but AOL always seems too bogged down with
all of their internal politics to get anything done."
Ars is currently reaching out to former Winamp employees and developers as
this story develops. If that includes you, please get in touch.
UPDATE 1:57pm CT: Doug Serton, an AOL spokesperson, told Ars: "We decline to
comment beyond the note posted on the site earlier."
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."
.Cyrus Farivar / Cyrus is the Senior Business Editor at Ars Technica, and is
also a radio producer and author. His first book, The Internet of Elsewhere,
was published in April 2011.
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