Winamp
media player software
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014, now known as the Winamp Group. Since version 2, it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community.
Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997, along with basic counterparts for MS-DOS and Macintosh, and quickly grew popular with over 3 million downloads, paralleling the developing trend of MP3 file sharing. Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most downloaded Windows applications. By 2000, Winamp had over 25 million registered users and by 2001 it had 60 million users. A poor reception to the 2002 rewrite, Winamp3, was followed by the release of Winamp 5 in 2003, and a later release of version 5.5 in 2007. Winamp for Android was released in 2010. The last AOL-developed version, Winamp 5.666, was released in 2013.
The public source identifies “Winamp” as media player software. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Winamp, media and player.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Winamp”, the useful work is to connect “media player software” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193493. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2014, 1997 and 1998.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Winamp”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Winamp primary sources, Winamp archive and Winamp research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Winamp”?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Winamp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.