The untimely demise of Winamp has encouraged Spotify to release a new software named "Spotiamp" as a small "tribute to the former media player."
The current generation may not be all that familiar with Winamp but there was a time when the media player was singularly associated with MP3 playback. AOL announced a sudden end of the 15-year-old free online music streaming player earlier last month. Before most of its dedicated users could digest the news, the app and its services were pulled down on December 20. But it seems that was not the end for Winamp. Spotify announced Friday that it has found a way to honor the long-lived player by dedicating a new software with a similar name, "Spotiamp."
"To honour the engineering skill and passion that goes into building wonderful software that millions of people enjoy we would like to share a small tribute to honor the great legacy of Winamp," Spotify's Channtal Fleischfresser wrote in a blog post. "Spotiamp is a fully functional music player where you can login using your Spotify Premium account and stream music. We hope this will give you some nice memories of the days before Spotify!"
Winamp was established around 15 years ago. It was developed by former University of Utah college students Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev and launched in 1997. It became one of the most popular MP3 file sharing software during the 1990s. In 1999, AOL acquired the media player after it bought Frankel's company Nullsoft for $80 million in stock.
Unfortunately, by the time Winamp got to celebrate its 10th anniversary, most users had moved on to more sophisticated and modern software.
"Most of the people I spoke with were genuinely shocked to discover that not only is Winamp still kicking on their 10th anniversary, the app is seeing the release of a new version this week," a reviewer told PCMag at the time.
