Reminder that you can play the Internet Archive’s music collection through a web-based version of Winamp.

Reminder that Winamp was one of the most revolutionary consumer-facing software applications of all time. (I rank it up there with VisiCalc and NCSA Mosaic) https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1297697969924452352

As far as I know, Winamp was the first…
* non-demo MP3 player app
* dedicated music player with non-trivial visualizations
* app OF ANY KIND of allow the user to re-skin the UI
* and upload those skins to a big shared catalogue
* and about a billion other things

One of Winamp’s underlying philosophies was to provide more control to the user. Not just fine tuning, but a world of creativity beyond that. The visualisation engine had a built-in visual scripting editor. It was AMAZING fun.

Winamp rewarded exploration with creative power.

I gave a talk on Winamp back at 2012, and I need to dig it up again because there was SO MUCH WACKY SHIT. I think my favourite was the 3D CAD tool someone built on top of the visualisation engine: great for anyone designing buildings that pulse in time to music

Winamp provided an amazing balance of power and usability. It had the kind of configurability you’d usually associate with Linux setups, but far less fragile or arcane. It was a friendlier kind of computing anarchy with less gatekeeping.

Along with the vis scripting IDE, The 5.x series also had a "Signal Processing Studio" where you could write dynamic expressions to tweak the audio stream on the fly. It came in the app, no external tools needed.

I blogged a silly tutorial at the time:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111208101934/http://cheerleader.yoz.com/2006/02/wicked-crazy-fun-with-winamp-signal-processing.html

If you were a kid on a Windows machine 15-20 years ago, and you had any access to MP3s, then you probably spent a huge amount of time in Winamp. It was one of the most accessible ways to fall into programming. https://twitter.com/crschmidt/status/1297994498518245376