Unforgettable Interfaces 10/Winamp

Electric Dreams (1984)

Anyone who lived in an era that started before the digital revolution is now a kind of modern-day historian. We have witnessed a lot. I remember the first time I was sitting in front of a computer. Not before or during, but I remember what happened at the end. I knew I was going to spend a lot of time on a computer, and I did, and I still do.

So, I’m making a list of interfaces that have an influence on me. Interfaces of my memories. The first one that popped up in my mind was the legendary Winamp. Maybe I was influenced by my recent discovery of Winamp Skin Museum. I think Jordan Eldredge did a terrific job with creating “a fast, searchable, and shareable, interface for the collection of Winamp Skins amassed on the Internet Archive.”

For the ones who do not have any idea what I’m talking about, Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft.

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. This version was also the one that met with Winamp.

In the emergence of the MP3 format in the late 1990's, WinAmp was a dominant player when it was built and distributed as freeware by NullSoft. The program was simple and small, but it offered so many features. We could even do a live broadcast on mIRC (another historical moment is here).

A special feature of Winamp was its ability to customise and visualise. You could add album art and track tags. Winamp plugins allowed you to create visualisations unseen at the time, such as sound-activated graphics.

In recent years, however, people have stopped searching for media players since their smartphones have their own built-in players.

Unfortunately, I don’t have my old computer or the songs to create mine again. But this one won my heart, with Alvin And The Chipmunks at the top of the list: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

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And oh boy, in my first Winamp era, I did.

The next one will be about a personal turning point.