Winamp, the media player that symbolizes for many the pinnacle of the era of mp3 files, gets its first official update in four years. Considering that the previous update was quite minor and didn’t really make Winamp a modern piece of software, this is actually the most significant sign of life in almost a decade – and from the developer’s point of view the opening shot for the comeback they want to be impressive.
In the new version 5.9, Winamp looks very similar to the previous and nostalgic versions, but behind the scenes it is an almost completely new software. It supports Windows 11, and relies on modern development tools that make it a fast, reliable and stable player that hardly consumes system resources while it runs in the background.
The development team explains that now, after the work on rebuilding the player on new and stable foundations has been completed, it will be possible to present real innovations that will add capabilities to Winamp that did not exist before. The ambition is to turn Winamp into a podcast player, and a platform where artists can communicate directly with the audience.
The current version is defined by the company as a release candidate (RC), and is waiting for feedback to fix problems, some of which have already been discovered. In addition, she also does not intend to neglect the previous versions of Windows and she asks, from those who can, to test the player in Windows 7 and Windows 8 as well.