Winamp has been saved.

"Winamp is a top independent player that gives millions of people the best player functionality available."

Alexandre Saboundjian CEO, Radionomy Group

Explore the archive
The campaign journey · November 2013 to February 2014 · Explore the archive ↓

Thank you for your support!

Radionomy acquired Winamp and Shoutcast from AOL. The Verge · 14 Jan 2014 Press release archive

Radionomy acquires Winamp banner from the original campaign archive. Petition
Won 14 · 01 · 2014

Our petition brought a great contribution towards the decision of AOL and the efforts made to find a potential buyer and reach a mutually convenient agreement.

Radionomy gave Winamp listeners access to one of the world's largest networks of online radio stations, spanning numerous music genres and cultures. As the newest member of the Radionomy Group, Winamp delivered:

  • Access to more than 60,000 internet radio stations
  • Playback for 60 audio and video formats
  • 6,000 add-ons, including skins, plug-ins, online services and visualizations
  • Availability in 16 languages
  • Tools for managing podcast subscriptions

A brief history of Winamp

Two voices from the era: the documentary record and a fan's testimony.

~8 min 1997 to 2014 documentary

A short documentary on Winamp's history, from the 1997 Nullsoft release through the AOL years, the December 2013 shutdown threat, and the petition that brought it back. Embedded via youtube-nocookie.com: no cookies are dropped until you press play.

The community voice

On day three of the campaign Jon Paula, one of YouTube's most-watched voices in 2013, recorded a personal testimonial explaining why Winamp mattered to him. We linked to it from the original savewinamp.com petition page; this is the same clip, restored here so the campaign's contemporaneous community memory stays one click away.

~3 min Nov 2013 fan testimony

Jon Paula, , recorded mid-campaign, embedded into the original savewinamp.com petition page. Privacy-enhanced via youtube-nocookie.com; no third-party cookies until playback starts.

The campaign archive

In November 2013, AOL announced Winamp would be shut down on December 20th. Within days, a handful of developers, a petition, and tens of thousands of fans turned a goodbye into a rescue. This is how it happened: recovered, researched, and laid out in full.

The original petition

Nov 2013 · change.org · ~48,000 signatures

The original Save Winamp campaign banner.
The original campaign banner, . Click to enlarge.

Sign the petition

Please help by asking AOL to keep it alive or allow this software to go open source.

By signing this petition you are proving to AOL or other investors that:

  1. Winamp has a lot more supporters than they may think. Show them you do care about what happens to Winamp;
  2. there IS a need to keep this project alive;
  3. if it cannot be kept alive in one form or another then its source code needs to be released to the public.
Verbatim from the original petition, November 2013.

View the original petition on change.org

Why shouldn't Winamp die?

4 arguments · drafted Nov 2013 · original petition copy

The history of digital music started with Winamp

Since 1997, Winamp pioneered the digital music revolution. It was the first mainstream MP3 player that made digital music accessible to millions of users worldwide. Before streaming services, before iTunes, there was Winamp, and it truly did whip the llama's ass.

Winamp is still one of the best music players around

With support for dozens of audio and video formats, deep customisation through skins and plugins, powerful playlist management, and a loyal community of developers, Winamp remained unmatched in features and flexibility. No bloat, just pure functionality.

It is simple to use

While other players added unnecessary features and complexity, Winamp stayed true to its roots: a fast, lightweight, intuitive music player that just works. Install it, point it at your music, and play. That simplicity was, and still is, beautiful.

And lots of people still use it

Millions of users worldwide relied on Winamp daily. From casual listeners to DJs, from podcasters to internet radio stations using Shoutcast, the Winamp ecosystem supported countless use cases and communities.

"Now help us carry on the legacy."

A researched campaign timeline

14 milestones · 1997 → 2026 · researched from web.archive.org

Reconstructed from web.archive.org snapshots, the contemporaneous press, and the original campaign archive. Every claim below is sourced.

  1. Origin

    Winamp 1.0 ships from Nullsoft

    Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev release Winamp 1.0 from their company Nullsoft. It quickly becomes the de-facto MP3 player of the desktop era: small, fast, skinnable, and the first audio player most people of that generation ever installed on a Windows machine.

    Screenshot of the classic Winamp player with the WINAMP titlebar, a green LCD display showing 'DE LA SOUL - DOG EAT DOG', a spectrum analyser, and the lightning-bolt logo.
    The classic Winamp chrome: green LCD readout, real-time spectrum analyser, transport controls, and the unmistakable yellow lightning-bolt logo. Frame from the "A brief history of Winamp" documentary embedded in the history section above.

    Sources: Wikipedia · Winamp Wikipedia · Justin Frankel

  2. Acquisition

    AOL acquires Nullsoft

    AOL purchases Nullsoft (and with it, Winamp) for an estimated US $80 to $100 million in stock. Winamp reaches roughly 25 million users by June 2000, and the copyright line in the About dialog quietly changes from Nullsoft, Inc. to Nullsoft, an AOL company.

    Screenshot of the Winamp 2.0 About dialog showing the famous 1998 freakout-llama Easter egg, with the copyright line 'Copyright © 1997-1998 Nullsoft, Inc.'
    The Winamp 2.0 About dialog from , ten months before the AOL acquisition. The freakout-llama Easter egg behind "Winamp, The Definitive Audio Player for Windows" is the most- recognised motif from the pre-AOL era. Frame from the history documentary embedded above.

    Sources: Wikipedia · Nullsoft archive · nullsoft.com news, June 1999

  3. Shutdown announced

    AOL announces Winamp will shut down on December 20th

    AOL posts a notice on winamp.com: the software will no longer be available for download or supported after December 20, 2013. The community is given exactly thirty days.

    CNN Money's November 20, 2013 article announcing the Winamp shutdown.
    CNN Money breaks the story. Click to enlarge.

    Sources: CNN Money archive · 2013-11-21 live unavailable · Engadget live archive · 2020-10

  4. Rumour

    Microsoft reportedly in talks with AOL

    TechCrunch reports, citing one source, that Microsoft is in advanced negotiations to buy Winamp and Shoutcast from AOL. The price has not been agreed. The deal will never close.

    TechCrunch article from 21 November 2013 reporting Microsoft's interest in buying Winamp from AOL.
    TechCrunch's exclusive. Click to enlarge.

    Source: TechCrunch live archive · 2013-12-30

  5. Campaign begins

    Design work begins

    Volunteers from three continents start sketching the first Save Winamp assets, roughly three days after the AOL announcement. Everything is built in personal hours, on personal machines, with no budget. By the night of the 25th, the banner, the petition copy, and the early HTML are in place.

  6. Petition launch

    Save Winamp launches on change.org and savewinamp.com

    The petition goes live, asking AOL to either keep Winamp alive or open-source it. The Register, Ars Technica, Tom's Hardware, Radio Survivor and Neowin pick up the story within hours. By the end of the day, the petition crosses 15,000 signatures.

    The Save Winamp site on launch day: the petition hero, the petition text, and the four arguments.
    savewinamp.com on its first day, via archive.org · 2013-11-26 04:54 UTC. Click to enlarge.

    Sources: The Register live archive · 2020-08 · Ars Technica live archive · 2013-11-26 · Radio Survivor live archive · 2013-11-29

  7. 25,000 signatures

    Press explodes across four continents

    Less than 48 hours after launch, AfterDawn reports the petition has crossed 25,000 signatures. By Day 2, the campaign had been picked up by 36 international outlets in English, Romanian, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Hungarian, Brazilian Portuguese, Croatian and French, alongside the front page of r/technology on Reddit.

    Ars Technica's coverage of the Save Winamp petition.
    Ars Technica live archive
    The Register's coverage of the Save Winamp petition.
    The Register live archive
    NBC News coverage of the Save Winamp campaign.
    NBC News live archive
    The Reddit r/technology thread that pushed the petition to the front page.
    Reddit r/technology live archive

    Sources: AfterDawn live archive · 2013-11-29 · Neowin archive · 2013-11-27 live blocked

  8. Holding the line

    Three days before the deadline, momentum keeps building

    With the AOL shutdown date 72 hours away, the petition is still gathering signatures. AOL has gone quiet publicly but, behind the scenes, is talking to Microsoft, Radionomy, and a handful of other bidders. The community holds.

    savewinamp.com · 2013-12-17 archive

  9. Deadline passes

    The promised shutdown never comes

    December 20th arrives, and then it passes. Winamp.com stays up. The downloads keep working. AOL has been quietly extending negotiations rather than turning out the lights. The campaign has bought time.

  10. Saved

    Radionomy acquires Winamp and Shoutcast from AOL

    Belgian online-radio aggregator Radionomy announces it has acquired Winamp and Shoutcast from AOL for a reported US $5 to $10 million. AOL takes a 12% stake in Radionomy as part of the deal. The official press release follows on January 16th, with CEO Alexandre Saboundjian's statement that headlines this site.

    TechCrunch coverage of the Radionomy acquisition.
    TechCrunch live archive
    tech.eu coverage of the Radionomy acquisition.
    tech.eu live archive
    PR Newswire official press release for the Radionomy acquisition.
    PR Newswire live archive

    Sources: TechCrunch live archive · 2014-01-15 · tech.eu live archive · 2022-06 · PR Newswire live archive · 2014-01-19

  11. Victory page

    "Winamp has been saved."

    SaveWinamp.com is updated. The urgent red call-to-action is replaced with a thank-you, Saboundjian's quote, and a banner from Radionomy. The petition, having gathered an estimated ~48,000 signatures over ten weeks, is retired. The site you are reading is a direct descendant of this victory page.

    The Save Winamp site after the Radionomy acquisition: new hero, the thank-you message, and the Radionomy banner.
    savewinamp.com the day the victory page went live, via archive.org · 2014-02-09. Click to enlarge.
    A new 'Many thanks to' credits footer was added in the victory phase, listing the press outlets that amplified the campaign.
    A new credits footer crediting Ars Technica, NBC News, Yahoo! News, The Register, Neowin, Softonic, Radio Survivor and others, added on the victory page.
  12. Community

    Winamp Enthusiasts Forum goes online

    With the campaign won and the petition retired, the community needed a permanent gathering point. winampenthusiasts.com (a MyBB-powered forum dedicated to Winamp tech support, skins, plug-ins and general appreciation) appears in the Wayback Machine for the first time on 2 March 2014, already counting 322 registered members. The forum ran for years as the de-facto independent Winamp community before the conversation gradually migrated to Reddit and Facebook. The active continuation today is the Winamp Enthusiasts Facebook group, also reachable from the navbar above.

    Sources: archive · 2014-03-02 (322 members) archive · 2020-07 Facebook group (active)

  13. Source code

    Winamp's source code is published on GitHub

    Radionomy, now Llama Group, publishes the Winamp for Windows source on GitHub under the bespoke Winamp Collaborative License. Within hours, observers note proprietary code from Dolby, Intel, Microsoft and Shoutcast DNAS in the tree.

    TechSpot coverage of the Winamp source-code release.
    TechSpot live archive
    BleepingComputer coverage of the Winamp source-code release.
    BleepingComputer live archive

    Sources: TechSpot live archive · 2024-09-26 · BleepingComputer live archive · 2024-09-26

  14. Community forks

    The repo is pulled, but 700+ forks survive

    After The Register asks about the licensing of the third-party code, Llama Group deletes the GitHub repository. By then, over 700 community forks have been mirrored. The code is, in practical terms, free now.

    The Register article on the proprietary code discovered in the Winamp repo.
    The Register's exposé. Click to enlarge.

    Source: The Register live

  15. Still here

    Twelve years on, Winamp is still alive

    Winamp ships under Llama Group, community forks ship in parallel, and the llama, improbably and persistently, has not been put down. None of this would have happened without the petition you can read above.

    What "still alive" looks like in 2026:

    • The official Windows desktop player is still maintained by winamp.com under Llama Group (formerly Radionomy), with new releases shipping for Windows 10/11.
    • The September 2024 source-code release on GitHub, even though the central repo was pulled, left behind a healthy ecosystem of 700+ community forks keeping the codebase publicly studyable and fix-able.
    • Webamp, Jordan Eldredge's pixel-perfect HTML5 reimplementation of Winamp 2.91, runs in any modern browser, complete with the MilkDrop visualiser. Block 5 of this page launches it locally, no install required, no third-party requests at load time.
    • The community that grew around the campaign is still gathering: the Winamp Enthusiasts Facebook group is the active successor to the winampenthusiasts.com forum (a continuous Winamp meeting place since 2014).

    In short: twelve years on, every promise the petition asked AOL to keep (a living player, a community, and an eventual path to open source) has been kept, in one form or another.

The campaign brought together thousands of Winamp fans worldwide and a small group of developers working unpaid in their own time, building the whole thing in roughly three days. Proof that community passion can outrun a corporate shutdown clock.

Media coverage

12 outlets · 14 languages · 4 continents

Within forty-eight hours of launch, Save Winamp was front-page news from San Francisco to São Paulo. Each card below shows the actual article as it appeared in the press (or as preserved by archive.org). The story was also covered in Romanian, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Hungarian, Croatian, French and Brazilian Portuguese.

Ars Technica article: Winamp lovers beg AOL to open-source code.
Ars Technica Winamp lovers beg AOL to open-source code live archive · 2013
NBC News article: Still love Winamp? You can try to save it from being shuttered by AOL.
NBC News Still love Winamp? You can try to save it from being shuttered live archive · 2013
Yahoo! News article: SaveWinamp petition aims to save the player as open source.
Yahoo! News SaveWinamp petition aims to save the player as open source archive · 2013
The Register article: Indy devs to AOL: Save Winamp, or at least make it open source.
The Register Indy devs to AOL: Save Winamp, or at least make it open source live archive · 2020
CNN Money article: AOL to shut down Winamp on Dec. 20 after 15 years of MP3 service.
CNN Money AOL to shut down Winamp on Dec. 20 after 15 years of MP3 service archive · 2013
Engadget article: Winamp, the media player of your college years, is shutting down next month.
Engadget Winamp, the media player of your college years, is shutting down next month live archive · 2020
Neowin article: Petition to turn Winamp into open source goes over 12,000 signatures.
Neowin Petition to turn Winamp into open source goes over 12,000 signatures live archive · 2013
Softonic article: Fans ask AOL to make Winamp open source so it can live on.
Softonic Fans ask AOL to make Winamp open source so it can live on archive · 2013
AfterDawn article: Petition hits 25,000 signatures.
AfterDawn Petition hits 25,000 signatures (27 November 2013) live archive · 2013
Tom's Hardware article: Winamp Petition Emerges as Microsoft Considers Purchase.
Tom's Hardware Winamp petition emerges as Microsoft considers purchase live archive · 2013
Reddit r/technology front-page thread on the Save Winamp petition.
Reddit · r/technology Front-page thread: 3,693 points, 1,278 comments live archive · 2013
Digital Trends article: Winamp fans start change.org petition.
Digital Trends Winamp fans start change.org petition live archive · 2013

Thank you to every journalist, blogger, forum admin and YouTuber who amplified the message in the days that mattered.

What was saved?

Winamp 2.91 · 5-track mixtape · MilkDrop 2 / WebGL visualizer

Screenshot of Webamp 2.91 with the campaign mixtape loaded and the MilkDrop visualizer reacting to audio.
The chrome you grew up with: drag the windows, swap the skin, watch MilkDrop bend to the bassline.

2024 / source freed · 2026 / still playable

Press play. This is what was saved.

Five CC-BY-SA tracks. Five chapters of the campaign: boot, heroes, crisis, defiance, victory. The Webamp marquee scrolls the dates as the music plays.

Loads ~520 KB of webamp.butterchurn-bundle.min.js on click, served from this domain. No third-party requests. The bundle is the MIT-licensed captbaritone/webamp, vendored under js/vendor/webamp/.

Open this page on a desktop to play. Webamp's pixel-perfect chrome was built for a 1024×768 cathode-ray world; touch-and-pinch is a different artefact. The screenshot above is the closest we can offer your phone.

Where Winamp lives today

The petition kept Winamp alive; the community kept it usable. Twelve years on, these are the places to find the player, the skins, the conversations and the code. Every link below was checked the day this section was last updated.

Run Winamp today

Three ways to actually press play in 2026.

  • Official Winamp winamp.com

    Llama Group's continuing build for Windows 10 and 11. The direct descendant of the player the petition fought for.

  • WACUP getwacup.com

    The Winamp Community Update Project, a long-running independent build maintained by DrO. Bug fixes, security patches and plug-in compatibility on top of the classic Winamp 2 chrome.

  • Webamp (in this browser) savewinamp.com/#player

    Jordan Eldredge's pixel-perfect HTML5 reimplementation of Winamp 2.91, vendored on this page. Click Launch Webamp in the navbar to spin it up in any modern browser.

Skins and customisation

Where the chrome you grew up with still lives.

Community

People still talk about this player every day.

Source code and development

Open code that grew up around (and after) Winamp.

Supporters of the idea