Winamp

Winamp is a popular media player developed by Nullsoft that was first released by Justin Frankel in 1996. Version 5.5 was released on October 10th, 2007 marking the 10th anniversary of the software and includes many upgrades includes a new Bento skin. Winamp first gained popularity in 1997 when the new mp3 format of compressed digital music first made its appearance on the Internet.

Pros & Cons
Pros:

•Extensive plugin support
•Great UI, with easy to access library, playlist, EQ, visualization, etc.
•Not a computer resource hog like WMP
•Slick look with cool visualizations
•Shoutcast support
•Highly customizable look and feel with skins
•Excellent Internet radio integration
•Customizable visualizations are great
•Multiple sound card support: listen on your hi-fi card while Windows gets the onboard chip.
•Auto-Tag feature: good for roll your own mp3s and to correct these collectors items.

Cons:

•Windows Only
•Still somewhat bloated compared to Foobar2000 and other players aimed at expert users

Features

Audio formats: MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis MIDI, MOD, MP1, MP2, M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, WMA, Chiptunes, and more

Video formats: AVI, MPEG, NSV (Nullsoft Streaming Video)

Includes many visualizations with full-screen support

Keyboard shortcuts

Extensive plug-in support for input/output, sound and visual effects

Skinnable with many freely available skins

Free access to streaming media including: Internet radio and XM Satellite radio (powered by AOL radio)

Ripping, encoding, burning in Winamp Pro version

Support for portable media players

t is currently the second most popular media player to Microsoft's Windows Media Player. As of 2005, Winamp had approximately 55 million user worldwide. It is available in two versions: 1) a fully-functional free version, and 2) a Pro version available for $19.95 that adds extensive ripping, encoding, and burning functionality. See www.winamp.com for more information and to download the player.