YOZ NOTES FROM 2025: I gave this talk at Noisebridge's semi-regular "5 Minutes Of Fame" event on 11 November 2012. (It took me more like ten minutes, but pretty much everyone else overran too.) I gave a longer version of this talk at Notacon 10 in Cleveland, Ohio a year later; you can watch the video online but unfortunately the audio cuts out around the 6 minute mark: https://archive.org/details/NotAConArchiveInfocon/notacon+10+-+2013/Video/Notacon+10+-+Track+2+Talk+13+-+The+Winamp+Imperative+-+Yoz.mp4
You can grab the slides for this talk (10MB PPTX file) here: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZRBh95ZAHRd8NerGxuhDsjmnttePS1l9KDy
This is about Winamp, a 15-year-old music player that I've been obsessed with for a long, long time, even though I haven't really been able to use it since I switched to the Mac six years ago. Since the arrival of MP3, Winamp is the one app that's reflected, better than any other, the changing power structure of music. And it single-handedly kickstarted its own genre of software, which the likes of iTunes and Windows Media Player tried and failed to copy.
Y'see, Winamp isn't just a music player. Winamp is music.
The story of Winamp goes something like this: A band of eager teenagers makes the kind of music they want to listen to, becomes a huge hit, signs with a major label that's desperately trying to be hip and knows there's something in all this new MP3 malarkey but not quite sure what. The band immediately comes into conflict with that label which won't let them release what they want to release, so they kind of go rogue on them, leak a bunch of half-finished demos without permission, major clashes between the anarchist upstarts and the big money guys who just don't understand. Then there's a difficult 3rd album, and ever since then they can't shake the reputation that, y'know, they were revolutionary at the time, but now all the key members have moved onto other things, they're an ancient institution and the world has changed since then. There's something calling itself Winamp for Android, and a very tame spin off for the Mac, but to most intents and purposes Winamp has been pretty much frozen for at least the nine years.
So why do I still love Winamp? Let me give you a tour.
Here's an example of what Winamp looks like when you start it up in the classic skin. Most of the time I run it like this: It's just the controls for the current track, a nice big scrubber bar (yes, it's called the scrubber) and there's the play cue over to the side. And it's nice and small, so I can keep it up there while working on other things, or even minimise it so it's tiny but still actually usable.
But then there's also the equaliser, because Winamp is one of the few major music players that actually lets you tweak how the music sounds. It's remarkable how few players give you these controls. And there's the media library, if you want to treat your music like a giant database.
And all this is, famously skinnable. So far, all my research says that Winamp was the first application - not OS or window manager, but single app - that let you totally reskin its looks. And because the skins were easily redistributable, Winamp skins became an art form in themselves.
But if we're talking visuals, we have to talk about the visualiser, which is just one of the most fabulous tinker toys I've ever seen. If you think of it as just an acid-fueled epilepsy trigger then you're really missing out, because now what you can do is, while you're listening to music, craft a visualization that expresses how the music feels to you. And the interface is bizarre but surprisingly tinker-friendly, and so damn powerful that someone has actually made an architectural CAD app entirely within it. If you're designing a building that wobbles in time to music, this is the tool for you.
But the tinkering doesn't stop there. Here's Winamp's audio effects generator, which gives you a live expression editor with which you can change how music sounds WHILE YOU'RE LISTENING TO IT. I build a live pitch bending slider in about 10 minutes. And I haven't even touched on Shoutcast, or the massive plain ecosystem, or the Javascript API, etc. etc. etc.
So, Winamp is a hacker platform. It lets you tinker with all kinds of shit without restarting, and it does it in a way that is both disorganized yet remarkably accessible. This is why I brought it to Noisebridge. But more importantly, it says that music deserves more than listening; it deserves playing with.
Contrast this with the iTunes and the other Apple music players. I don't know anyone who genuinely loves iTunes, but see more than enough people who hate it. And if you - understandably - think that Winamp is a UI nightmare, then try this: Open up your music collection. Browse through it and find a track you want to hear. Start playing it. Then, while you're browsing, see another track that you'd love to hear after this one. Now: Does your music player let you easily cue that track up so that it automatically plays next, without interrupting the current track? If it's iTunes, then DOES IT BUGGERY. iTunes wants you to work its way, it wants your music organized its way, it won't let you play any random file unless you add it to your Library, and you really don't want your library messed up, believe me.
And this gets me really angry, because my music collection is one of the most personal and historically meaningful things I own; it's bizarre and colorful yet surprisingly reliable in its ability to relate to me. And it has grown organically, and so it's a beautiful mess. It's a cornucopia. iTunes gives it all the unique charm of a spreadsheet. Winamp welcomes the mess and gives it whole new ways to express itself. Most music players want me to sit down with headphones, whereas Winamp wants me to get up and dance around the room like a grinning idiot.
But with Winamp stalled, is there any hope for the future? Well, there's Tomahawk, an open source cross-platform music player that, while it may not be particularly beautiful or playful yet, does at least respect that my music collection lives all over the bloody place. And it's at version 0.5, and the project is very active, so give it a go.
But still, to really understand what I'm talking about: Next chance you have, take some time to really explore Winamp, and you'll see a beautiful mess that just begs to be played with. This IS music. And it STILL really whips the llama's ass. Thank you.