10 ms·

Winamp skins make me miss the fun of software circa 2000. The sun was bright and the possibility space wide open. A piece of software would come out, make hug

Winamp skins make me miss the fun of software circa 2000. The sun was bright and the possibility space wide open. A piece of software would come out, make huge strides in enabling a new use case effectively, leave the door open for people to make it theirs - and boy did they ever! In the last 20 years how have software music players changed? The files come from a subscription service easier to use and with much better metadata than tracks from Napster ever did. That's awesome! Also the subscription dictates you use their hot turd of software, with dreary spartan UI and zero room for functional customization to be had. Welcome to the future, now learn to like it or get called a luddite.

gfody 6y ago
I use MusicBee to listen to my di.fm subscription - the futures not bad
simias 6y ago
I still find Spotify's admittedly garbage electron app better than any other player I've ever used because I get (almost) all the music I could ever want at my fingertips without having to browse any third party website, find the files, buy/pirate them, load them in the right location with the right tags etc... The price to pay for this convenience is DRM and player lock-in (and all possible usage data being siphoned by said player). It is unfortunate, but as a user it's a price I'm willing to pay, even if reluctantly.
- MrGilbert 6y ago
  Yeah, and albums suddenly disappearing because the licenses ran out. Or, even worst: Albums being incomplete because certains track "aren't available". I don't know. I use Spotify as a radio replacement, but albums I like I try to buy as FLAC files. If they are lost, it's my own fault.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    As long as the music files are still available for purchase, then I’m fine with the situation as is.
    - muxator 6y ago
      Until they aren't. Convenience, DRM and collective inertia may well lead to disappearance of media delivered in open formats. Not tomorrow, not next year, but in 10 years? I am not so sure, unless a dedicated minority keeps pushing for it. But then, what happens when will come of age the generation that grew considering normal to only stream and buy a temporary license for media and books?
      - CraneWorm 6y ago
        what DRM? rip and pirate until you have everything you need
- nullify88 6y ago
  Its possible to create 3rd party spotify clients by using the librespot library and there exists alternatives but I havent seen any that could replace the official application. The only caveat is librespot only works with premium accounts.
arkitaip 6y ago
Back then you had a different software for each media type. Browsing Download.com, Tucows and Snap Files to find new cool stuff was a thing I did. Most of my friends did Windows/software customization with Litestep, skins, wallpapers and what not. shakes fist at sky
potta_coffee 6y ago
At the risk of sounding like a "get off my lawn" guy as well, computing just isn't fun anymore.
- golergka 6y ago
  Have you toyed with instagram masks and other AR projects lately? Fun moves around, and what's been hot and new 20 years ago is not anymore.
  - potta_coffee 6y ago
    There are still fun things to do, but platforms like Instagram are repellent to me. I'm toying with compilers and interpreters, which have been around for a long time. What's not "fun" is just how the nature of computing has changed, things have been conglomerated into platforms and a lot of the cool grassroots stuff is either dead or just not as visible.
GuB-42 6y ago
Speaking about fun. The reason why there is no Winamp 4: Who the hell wants to see a Winamp 4 Skin Yes it is an official reason https://web.archive.org/web/20131219003849/http://www.winamp.com/help/FAQ#General https://web.archive.org/web/20131219003849/http://www.winamp...
httgp 6y ago
Not to mention the insane licensing laws governing what music I can listen to. For example, I can’t listen to any Muse tracks on Spotify in India.
selykg 6y ago
Not sure if you remember Sonique. It was, I think, the first app (or at least MP3 player) that had non-rectangular shapes for it's skins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player)
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  I loved Sonique, but winamps consistent updates ended up winning me over. One huge love in the winamp side was when Tripx was released and made crazy visuals to go along with the music.
  - selykg 6y ago
    Oh for sure, I think Winamp just had staying power, and the various skins and visual plugins were awesome. I totally miss that time period, it was just a great time to be into technology.
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  Oh wow. I totally forgot about Sonique. I guess after Winamp I blocked it out. It actually reminds me a bit of my first Rio Player.
- isochronous 6y ago
  Oh my god, I haven't thought about Sonique in decades!
echelon 6y ago
We've lost so much since the 90's and 00's. Most people are using less configurable computers: phones. We can't easily install the software we want on our devices (iPhone especially, but Android also to an extent). Add to that the fact that we have to go through a distribution channel that takes a 30% cut. It's gross af. The social media platforms took over from websites. Nobody really bothers with personal websites or blogs anymore since the majority of the population get their news from social media. Why spend effort building for the long tail? Forum communities are dead because of social media. Facebook pages and subreddits are not the same. There's one search engine, and it has a pretty big moat. This search engine built a browser and is now trying to destroy ad blockers via extension capability removal and web bundles. It's pretty obvious that Google is trying to kill the web. AMP, steering away from semantic web, etc. They want everything to be Chrome. Firefox doesn't have as much user share because of aforementioned browser. We invented some cool protocols along the way (blockchain), but also lost a few that were really great (bittorrent, DHT). IRC is pretty dead. Now there's Slack and Discord. Riot is a pretty distant third. Apps and websites got SUPER BLOATED. A few things have improved, though: Git is pretty freaking sweet, and Rust is the language of the future. It's like when Link wakes up in Ocarina of Time after retrieving the Master Sword. Except in our case, everything's suddenly shiny, but feels plastic and artificial. We've discovered we're now renting everything and craftsmanship has withered away to a world of composability and integration. It's a simple story: billions and billions of dollars chased after capturing and exploiting the average human user. Each company it super simple to adopt their platform. To do so they had to destroy the competition and create a moat. These negative externalities coupled with high concentrations of users to platforms has left a wake of destruction. The indie, free and open web got knee-kicked by the giants.
- spectramax 6y ago
  I mostly agree with you. It’s sad. The only thing I disagree is that iPhone, while closed, is really important piece equipment in your life. It’s got your walking gait, browsing history, photos, videos, notes, passwords, social media accounts, health records, bank info, geo location, driving habits, where I work and how I commute, where I jog, etc. It’s ridiculously dense. This kind of a device didn’t exist in the year 2000. So, while 90’s tech would be awesome on the surface, I am glad Apple is in the driving seat to manage my phone’s security. App Store is amazing, shitty software that spies on you doesn’t make it through (chrome extensions anyone?). Treat 30% as a privacy fee. You’re glad there is a T2 security chip on your device. And you’re glad Apple pays $400k a year for several top notch security engineers that work there. This cannot be achieved by a bunch of Winamp hooligans and open source crusaders. Replace Apple with your fav phone manufacturer. Everything else, I agree. The internet has become a pile of shit.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> In the last 20 years how have software music players changed? For me? Not so much. I still have my music on Mp3s. The new stuff still plays as is did back then. Mp3 players never went away. I still occasionally use my old RCA Lyra but there is actually a healthy market for new models. My car still has an FM radio, but now I can plug a USB full of mp3s into it too. That isn't bad. Bluetooth and streaming has yet to become mandatory.
dllthomas 6y ago
I use pianobar, driven by key bindings in my window manager. It's conceptually something I easily could have had 20 years ago, but I didn't.
ponker 6y ago
I imagine that 90's software was like late 1800's Western United States... pioneers going west and just doing whatever the fuck they wanted, now you need a permit to replace your window in San Francisco.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  That world still exists if you'll just get off your phone. Not only does it still exist, but the Linux version of it is better (and wilder, in the important) ways than anything from the 90s.
  - ponker 6y ago
    It’s very different. Sure I can still use Winamp but it’s not like my friends and I are exchanging skins. The market is now an enthusiast’s one.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      Your friends who were exchanging winamp skins? Total enthusiasts. You didn't notice it because compared to the hardcore nerds who had been online for 15 years before you, you felt like regular people. Fast forward, and it turns out otherwise.
1A--__--__--1A 6y ago
That was awesome , thank you
brundolf 6y ago
I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I think much of the nostalgia for that era is actually rooted in limitations and the way that they made certain things exciting. Owning a new album was exciting, because previously you couldn't listen to that album. Getting a new mp3 player whose storage was suddenly measured in gigabytes was exciting, because previously you couldn't carry around that much music. Getting a new phone was exciting, because it probably had a camera, or internet access, or the ability to edit files, or some other fundamentally new feature that your previous device couldn't do. Spending a Saturday curating your music collection and updating metadata was exciting, because that couldn't be done for you automatically. Each stage where some barrier was overcome - be it a small, personal barrier or a large, technological barrier - came with this intoxicating sense of progress and improvement and possibility. If you assembled the solution yourself from existing products - software or hardware - it was all the more potent of a feeling. These days everything just works, amazingly well. That's a testament to progress, but it's also incredibly boring. There's little left in consumer tech to solve, by consumers or by companies. You have one miraculous device that does everything you could possibly want in your digital life, and does it really well, out of the box. It has as much bandwidth as you're likely to use, you can stream enough media to fill a thousand lifetimes for less than twenty dollars a month, it can shoot photographer-quality photos and orchestrate your smart home and play console-quality video games and run a fully-features office suite. Progress is what gadget-lovers like us miss. Tragically, the the very act of indulging it erases opportunities for it.
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  Brilliant insightful analysis. Thank you. It's the journey we find exciting - the difference from A to B. I remember the intoxicating experience of using Spotify for the first time in October 2008, using IP address account tricks to access it from outside the UK. This was despite being a winamp- (or actually foobar2000)-loving music pirate. Now, I don't think of it at all. I've arrived at destination B. What now? Well, there's desktop Linux on phones. That's fun and new, if you care about freedom, things being in the hands of the user, tinkering, and customisation. I'd go there, it needs some help.
- baxtr 6y ago
ece 6y ago
There's a Gap Dream song called College Music which goes: Too many soft machines / No relation to the world / Unnecessary wall / ... / It makes me sick sometimes. These are literally all the lyrics I could find, but maybe my Google fu is weak: https://www.spin.com/2016/06/gap-dream-college-music-stream-premiere/ https://www.spin.com/2016/06/gap-dream-college-music-stream-... Luddites were against not receiving a piece of the larger pie, not against technology or progress. https://qz.com/968692/luddites-have-been-getting-a-bad-rap-for-200-years-but-turns-out-they-were-right/ https://qz.com/968692/luddites-have-been-getting-a-bad-rap-f...

gfody 6y ago

I use MusicBee to listen to my di.fm subscription - the futures not bad

simias 6y ago

I still find Spotify's admittedly garbage electron app better than any other player I've ever used because I get (almost) all the music I could ever want at my fingertips without having to browse any third party website, find the files, buy/pirate them, load them in the right location with the right tags etc... The price to pay for this convenience is DRM and player lock-in (and all possible usage data being siphoned by said player). It is unfortunate, but as a user it's a price I'm willing to pay, even if reluctantly.

MrGilbert 6y ago
Yeah, and albums suddenly disappearing because the licenses ran out. Or, even worst: Albums being incomplete because certains track "aren't available". I don't know. I use Spotify as a radio replacement, but albums I like I try to buy as FLAC files. If they are lost, it's my own fault.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  As long as the music files are still available for purchase, then I’m fine with the situation as is.
  - muxator 6y ago
    Until they aren't. Convenience, DRM and collective inertia may well lead to disappearance of media delivered in open formats. Not tomorrow, not next year, but in 10 years? I am not so sure, unless a dedicated minority keeps pushing for it. But then, what happens when will come of age the generation that grew considering normal to only stream and buy a temporary license for media and books?
    - CraneWorm 6y ago
      what DRM? rip and pirate until you have everything you need
nullify88 6y ago
Its possible to create 3rd party spotify clients by using the librespot library and there exists alternatives but I havent seen any that could replace the official application. The only caveat is librespot only works with premium accounts.

arkitaip 6y ago

Back then you had a different software for each media type. Browsing Download.com, Tucows and Snap Files to find new cool stuff was a thing I did. Most of my friends did Windows/software customization with Litestep, skins, wallpapers and what not. shakes fist at sky

potta_coffee 6y ago

At the risk of sounding like a "get off my lawn" guy as well, computing just isn't fun anymore.

golergka 6y ago
Have you toyed with instagram masks and other AR projects lately? Fun moves around, and what's been hot and new 20 years ago is not anymore.
- potta_coffee 6y ago
  There are still fun things to do, but platforms like Instagram are repellent to me. I'm toying with compilers and interpreters, which have been around for a long time. What's not "fun" is just how the nature of computing has changed, things have been conglomerated into platforms and a lot of the cool grassroots stuff is either dead or just not as visible.

GuB-42 6y ago

Speaking about fun. The reason why there is no Winamp 4: Who the hell wants to see a Winamp 4 Skin Yes it is an official reason https://web.archive.org/web/20131219003849/http://www.winamp.com/help/FAQ#General https://web.archive.org/web/20131219003849/http://www.winamp...

httgp 6y ago

Not to mention the insane licensing laws governing what music I can listen to. For example, I can’t listen to any Muse tracks on Spotify in India.

selykg 6y ago

Not sure if you remember Sonique. It was, I think, the first app (or at least MP3 player) that had non-rectangular shapes for it's skins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonique_(media_player)

ganoushoreilly 6y ago
I loved Sonique, but winamps consistent updates ended up winning me over. One huge love in the winamp side was when Tripx was released and made crazy visuals to go along with the music.
- selykg 6y ago
  Oh for sure, I think Winamp just had staying power, and the various skins and visual plugins were awesome. I totally miss that time period, it was just a great time to be into technology.
ViViDboarder 6y ago
Oh wow. I totally forgot about Sonique. I guess after Winamp I blocked it out. It actually reminds me a bit of my first Rio Player.
isochronous 6y ago
Oh my god, I haven't thought about Sonique in decades!

echelon 6y ago

We've lost so much since the 90's and 00's. Most people are using less configurable computers: phones. We can't easily install the software we want on our devices (iPhone especially, but Android also to an extent). Add to that the fact that we have to go through a distribution channel that takes a 30% cut. It's gross af. The social media platforms took over from websites. Nobody really bothers with personal websites or blogs anymore since the majority of the population get their news from social media. Why spend effort building for the long tail? Forum communities are dead because of social media. Facebook pages and subreddits are not the same. There's one search engine, and it has a pretty big moat. This search engine built a browser and is now trying to destroy ad blockers via extension capability removal and web bundles. It's pretty obvious that Google is trying to kill the web. AMP, steering away from semantic web, etc. They want everything to be Chrome. Firefox doesn't have as much user share because of aforementioned browser. We invented some cool protocols along the way (blockchain), but also lost a few that were really great (bittorrent, DHT). IRC is pretty dead. Now there's Slack and Discord. Riot is a pretty distant third. Apps and websites got SUPER BLOATED. A few things have improved, though: Git is pretty freaking sweet, and Rust is the language of the future. It's like when Link wakes up in Ocarina of Time after retrieving the Master Sword. Except in our case, everything's suddenly shiny, but feels plastic and artificial. We've discovered we're now renting everything and craftsmanship has withered away to a world of composability and integration. It's a simple story: billions and billions of dollars chased after capturing and exploiting the average human user. Each company it super simple to adopt their platform. To do so they had to destroy the competition and create a moat. These negative externalities coupled with high concentrations of users to platforms has left a wake of destruction. The indie, free and open web got knee-kicked by the giants.

spectramax 6y ago
I mostly agree with you. It’s sad. The only thing I disagree is that iPhone, while closed, is really important piece equipment in your life. It’s got your walking gait, browsing history, photos, videos, notes, passwords, social media accounts, health records, bank info, geo location, driving habits, where I work and how I commute, where I jog, etc. It’s ridiculously dense. This kind of a device didn’t exist in the year 2000. So, while 90’s tech would be awesome on the surface, I am glad Apple is in the driving seat to manage my phone’s security. App Store is amazing, shitty software that spies on you doesn’t make it through (chrome extensions anyone?). Treat 30% as a privacy fee. You’re glad there is a T2 security chip on your device. And you’re glad Apple pays $400k a year for several top notch security engineers that work there. This cannot be achieved by a bunch of Winamp hooligans and open source crusaders. Replace Apple with your fav phone manufacturer. Everything else, I agree. The internet has become a pile of shit.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> In the last 20 years how have software music players changed? For me? Not so much. I still have my music on Mp3s. The new stuff still plays as is did back then. Mp3 players never went away. I still occasionally use my old RCA Lyra but there is actually a healthy market for new models. My car still has an FM radio, but now I can plug a USB full of mp3s into it too. That isn't bad. Bluetooth and streaming has yet to become mandatory.

dllthomas 6y ago

I use pianobar, driven by key bindings in my window manager. It's conceptually something I easily could have had 20 years ago, but I didn't.

ponker 6y ago

I imagine that 90's software was like late 1800's Western United States... pioneers going west and just doing whatever the fuck they wanted, now you need a permit to replace your window in San Francisco.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
That world still exists if you'll just get off your phone. Not only does it still exist, but the Linux version of it is better (and wilder, in the important) ways than anything from the 90s.
- ponker 6y ago
  It’s very different. Sure I can still use Winamp but it’s not like my friends and I are exchanging skins. The market is now an enthusiast’s one.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Your friends who were exchanging winamp skins? Total enthusiasts. You didn't notice it because compared to the hardcore nerds who had been online for 15 years before you, you felt like regular people. Fast forward, and it turns out otherwise.

1A--__--__--1A 6y ago

That was awesome , thank you

brundolf 6y ago

I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I think much of the nostalgia for that era is actually rooted in limitations and the way that they made certain things exciting. Owning a new album was exciting, because previously you couldn't listen to that album. Getting a new mp3 player whose storage was suddenly measured in gigabytes was exciting, because previously you couldn't carry around that much music. Getting a new phone was exciting, because it probably had a camera, or internet access, or the ability to edit files, or some other fundamentally new feature that your previous device couldn't do. Spending a Saturday curating your music collection and updating metadata was exciting, because that couldn't be done for you automatically. Each stage where some barrier was overcome - be it a small, personal barrier or a large, technological barrier - came with this intoxicating sense of progress and improvement and possibility. If you assembled the solution yourself from existing products - software or hardware - it was all the more potent of a feeling. These days everything just works, amazingly well. That's a testament to progress, but it's also incredibly boring. There's little left in consumer tech to solve, by consumers or by companies. You have one miraculous device that does everything you could possibly want in your digital life, and does it really well, out of the box. It has as much bandwidth as you're likely to use, you can stream enough media to fill a thousand lifetimes for less than twenty dollars a month, it can shoot photographer-quality photos and orchestrate your smart home and play console-quality video games and run a fully-features office suite. Progress is what gadget-lovers like us miss. Tragically, the the very act of indulging it erases opportunities for it.

mindfulhack 6y ago
Brilliant insightful analysis. Thank you. It's the journey we find exciting - the difference from A to B. I remember the intoxicating experience of using Spotify for the first time in October 2008, using IP address account tricks to access it from outside the UK. This was despite being a winamp- (or actually foobar2000)-loving music pirate. Now, I don't think of it at all. I've arrived at destination B. What now? Well, there's desktop Linux on phones. That's fun and new, if you care about freedom, things being in the hands of the user, tinkering, and customisation. I'd go there, it needs some help.
baxtr 6y ago

ece 6y ago

There's a Gap Dream song called College Music which goes: Too many soft machines / No relation to the world / Unnecessary wall / ... / It makes me sick sometimes. These are literally all the lyrics I could find, but maybe my Google fu is weak: https://www.spin.com/2016/06/gap-dream-college-music-stream-premiere/ https://www.spin.com/2016/06/gap-dream-college-music-stream-... Luddites were against not receiving a piece of the larger pie, not against technology or progress. https://qz.com/968692/luddites-have-been-getting-a-bad-rap-for-200-years-but-turns-out-they-were-right/ https://qz.com/968692/luddites-have-been-getting-a-bad-rap-f...