Winamp Is Now Adware

[cdnvic]

Move over gator, and kazza.... Winamp is now serving ads to it's users, even those who paid for a pro version.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=260083

Everything AOL get a hold of it screws up

[freeman]

I have always preferred to use Jet Audio which, in my opinion, can handle every media file with high quality

[nikster]

Oh, well. Use iTunes, then. It's free, and it's pretty good.

The only thing where WinAmp beats iTunes hands down is for cool animations when playing music.

Other than that - iTunes is way better. Just download it for free.

Slight caveat is converting existing WinAmp collections to iTunes - especially those from the olden days which don't have any id3 tags set and instead are sorted in folders with artist/album names. iTunes without id3 tags - basically meta information about a song embedded in the mp3 file -

is useless.

Quick Edit: Yes, it is a shame for WinAmp. It has been AOLed.

Edited November 27, 2006 by nikster

[h90]

Move over gator, and kazza.... Winamp is now serving ads to it's users, even those who paid for a pro version.

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=260083

Everything AOL get a hold of it screws up

any idea where I get the previous version from? And which version would it be?

[Phil Conners]

Itunes is usual idiot-ware, limited functionally, bloated size. Check out Media monkey.

[lopburi3]

I tried Itunes and really wish I hadn't. May be fine on a Mac but had severe heartburn with long names on PC (would delete without warning). Puts everything into nested file system so takes forever to find files outside application. After spending a week getting everything cataloged had more problems playing a number of files and had to remove it. Not fit for prime time (on PC) in my view. I did like animation but the Apple advertising was really not required every other minute.

Have been using Real Player and that seems to work well. Advertising is limited to a pop up when you sign out for the most part.

[cdnvic]

I used to map the ad servers back to google in my hosts file but they're serving from elsewhere now so that if you block the ads then the shoutcast directory doesn't load either.

Plenty of alternatives to the aol'd piece of adware.

Edited February 11, 2007 by cdnvic

[cdnvic]

Itunes is fine for a podcast aggagator but like Phil said, it's terribly bloated. If I didn't have a high end system I'd never touch it, although it works alot better on the Mac.

[fxm88]

Are you talking about some Thai version of Winamp?

[cdnvic]

Nope, the latest release of winamp has ads running in the media library.

[h90]

I used to map the ad servers back to google in my hosts file but they're serving from elsewhere now so that if you block the ads then the shoutcast directory doesn't load either.

Plenty of alternatives to the aol'd piece of adware.

I would be happy if I can get the previous version it was good enough for me. just listen my mp3 and there is VLC not very comfortable.

[cdnvic]

http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=winamp

[lomatopo]

I run Winamp V. 5.32, mainly to get to a lot of favorite radio stations including some of the XM stations via AOL. I do not see any advertising whatsoever?

I run Admuncher, which as an absolute godsend here on TV, so maybe that's blocking the stuff on Winamp?

I recently looked at TV without Admuncher on and was shocked at the level of advertising and general slowness.

edied to add: I run Wimamp Pro 5.32 with a paid license so maybe that keeps teh adware away?

Edited February 11, 2007 by lomatopo

[Guest Reimar]

I used to map the ad servers back to google in my hosts file but they're serving from elsewhere now so that if you block the ads then the shoutcast directory doesn't load either.

Plenty of alternatives to the aol'd piece of adware.

I would be happy if I can get the previous version it was good enough for me. just listen my mp3 and there is VLC not very comfortable.

h90,

go and look in your PM Folder!

[cdnvic]

I found a solution that works for me. Using Streamtuner and XMMS in Linux I can get all the shoutcast stations I did in Winamp without the stupid ads.

[cdnvic]

I put these into my router's domain blocker and now the ads have stopped, except for an in-house Winamp banner:

atwola.com

doubleclick.net