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Thursday, November 11
 

Winamp Kicks the (Llama's) Bucket | article | article2

AOL acquired Nullsoft in 1999 for around $100 million,
but the young team of Winamp developers never fully
assimilated into AOL's strict corporate culture. Now the
last members of the original Winamp team have said
goodbye to AOL and the door has all but shut on the
Nullsoft era.

Back in the day (1999 or so), when I was living in Terra,
I had 1000+ songs on my computer, all shared on the
dorm server and organized by Atlanta radio station - I
had 99X, 96 Rock, Hot 97.5, etc. And of course for dorm
parties you didn't need a stereo - just cheap beer and a
laptop; well I guess that's probably still true.

For me it was all about AllAdvantage , Napster, and
Winamp in 1999. At night, I used to sleep in my bed with
my then-gf Ana, listen to MP3s, and have my automatic
mouse mover make me some easy overnight cash.
Good times.

My favorite Winamp moments came a few years later,
though, when I made the "Weed and Coke" ATL mix
tape featuring such classics as My Baby Daddy,
Straight from the Dec, and some early Outkast. I also
mixed Allen Iverson's "Practice?!" tirade with a hip-hop
backbeat that I'll post here as soon as I get some online
space for it.

The article has another interesting tidbit that I didn't
know: the makers of Winamp also released Gnutella,
which was the first big peer-to-peer trading service after
Napster. Gnutella didn't use a central server so it wasn't
as easy to shut down as Napster.




:: Posted by salas
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