The Good Rips and burns music with excellent audio fidelity
The Bad It's a mess and does a poor job of synching with portable devices
The Bottom Line Winamp needs an overhaul to stay relevant
As someone with fond memories of the mid-'90s, from the launch of the Mosaic Web browser to the searing drama of the Boston Chicken IPO, I find myself utterly charmed by Winamp's home page. Winamp, owned by Nullsoft, a unit of Time Warner's (TWX
) AOL, exudes the "we're so crazy here" mentality that was fashionable in 1997.
In fact, the "About Us" page features a 1997 snapshot of Nullsoft founder Justin Frankel posing with a llama in Sedona, Ariz. The site warns first-time visitors not to step in any "llama poop" as they explore the site. The warning continues: "Hey!!!!!! Before you go off wandering on your own it might be best if we clue you to what you are going to find. Random clicking of links can get you lost and this is not the safest place in the world. Know what I'm sayin'?"
Winamp played an important role in the creation of digital music, paying the way for innovations like Napster and iPod. But despite the llama-waste warning, Winamp and Nullsoft aren't nearly as dangerous or incendiary as they suppose themselves to be. Nullsoft's other products include a pair of note-taking programs called (yawn) Sex and SafeSex. Wake me when it's over.
NOT PUSHY. Fits of silliness notwithstanding, the Winamp player still has a place. People put off by the commercialism of Apple (AAPL
), Microsoft, (MSFT
) and RealNetworks (RNWK
) may find Winamp appealing. It's about as noncommercial as something owned by AOL parent Time Warner can be.
By comparison, when people boot up Windows Media Player 10 from Microsoft, the software giant uses every opportunity to connect people to its music store and sites owned by partners such as Movielink and MusicNow. The experience of using Windows Media 10 is a lot like looking at a glossy magazine, complete with pictures of stars from Stevie Wonder to Weezer and Aimee Mann.
It's not that Winamp is a commercial-free zone. The player can be customized to look like Batman, just in time for the release of Batman Begins, a new movie from Warner Brothers, for example.
GEEK CHIC. But Winamp is just too weird to serve as a real commercial medium. The tiny type, the dozens of obscure menus and buttons that clutter the screen, the difficulty of figuring out how to perform basic functions like ripping music from a CD, all mark Winamp as something that only a serious geek could love.
And for the serious geek with a bent toward alternative music, there's a lot to love. Winamp handles the crucial task of recording and playing music in digital format quite well. It can be set to encode music in a variety of standards, from good ol' dependable MP3 to the more advanced but incompatible AAC standard embraced by Apple. I recorded several versions of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, using AAC and various MP3 settings. To my ear, the AAC versions were indistinguishable from the higher-quality MP3 tracks that I ripped. And I couldn't tell any of them apart from the remastered CD that I used.
As an MP3 ripper, Winamp scores some points. I skipped the free version and paid $14.95 for Winamp Pro. That allows you to rip 48 times faster than the speed of playing back the CD in real time. In other words, you can copy a 48-minute CD in just one minute using Winamp Pro -- 24 times faster than the free version, which is too slow to be of any use whatsoever. Winamp Pro also allowed me to record at a very high audio standard of 320 kilobits a second. The version of Windows Media 10 that I tested topped out at 192 kilobits.
WHAT MP3? The high-quality files take up a lot of space. A good MP3 recording will take up about two times as much space as a Windows recording of comparable quality, I found. The advantage: Recordings made with a good MP3 player such as Winamp can be played back on any device. Plus, Winamp can play files recorded in Apple's version of AAC, known as MPEG 4 AAC. Windows Media can't do that.
But the Winamp player is showing its age in some important ways. It was developed at a time when copying music meant burning tracks to a CD, not a mobile device. When I attached an MP3 player to my laptop, Winamp didn't pay any attention. But Windows Media 10 suddenly woke up and asked me if I would like to synch the device to the music files on my laptop, using Windows.
I went to the Winamp support site and downloaded a small piece of software that is supposed to help Winamp recognize all USB devices. The program allowed Winamp to see all the files on my hard drive and the network that it's connected to, but it still couldn't find the MP3 player. Score one for Windows.
A STEP TOO FAR. Regarding navigation, the Winamp player leaves a lot to be desired. It's cluttered and complex. I downloaded a skin to give the player the ever-so-cool Batman look, and that made things even worse. The original skin was easier to read, but it made it difficult to rip CD tracks onto my hard drive. There was a "burn" button that allowed me to copy tracks from the Winamp library to a CD. But the "rip" button didn't appear at first. I had to go back to read the directions in order to find it. It only appeared after I selected tracks in the playlist. That's one too many steps for me.
Winamp seeks to fill a real niche in the market. With the demise of free downloading services, digital music needs to have some way to preserve its outlaw spirit. But for my money, Winamp was just too clumsy and limited to get the job done.
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Rosenbush is a senior writer for BusinessWeek Online in New York
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