The Future of Winamp

Nobody uses Winamp anymore… or fewer people use Winamp nowadays

Let’s take a nostalgia trip like using Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine.

I’ve got a childhood flashback of when I used to have Winamp on an old Windows 98/ME computer, where it was Winamp skins and plugins. I used to post them to DeviantArt, but the policies are mediocre, as the site needs to be permanently closed by the FBI and the ICPO for investigation. Designing Winamp skins was my free time, but copyrighted images on Winamp skins have been a problem on DeviantArt as they have been either removed or relocated. I didn’t have Photoshop back then, as I had Paint Shop Pro 9 to skin Winamp skins on an old Windows XP laptop. Here are the skins that I made with Photoshop CS6 before my Windows 7 laptop reached its end of life (below):

These skins were made with Adobe Photoshop CS6 (RIP) on an old Toshiba laptop shipped with Windows 7 (RIP).

I’ve been making Winamp skins, first with Skinamp (but never posted on the internet since DeviantArt refused Skinamp) and later with Jellby’s Skinner’s Atlas. After a hard drive crash and some money issues, I let the skinning creativity kind of dissolve. Winamp 5.9 is now available for download on its official site. The Llama Group has now owned Winamp since Nullsoft’s demise. I’ve been losing interest in Winamp over the years, and as a result, I’ve neglected Winamp and have moved on to art and manga (comics), including purchasing commercial fonts. With fewer people using Winamp and fewer Winamp skins being made and/or updated, Adobe has officially retired the Creative Suite (as Creative Cloud won’t be usable with Winamp) as it has not been updated in the last decade. Many have since moved on to YouTube Music, internet radio, Apple Music, and Spotify. However, some of the Winamp skins I’ve made and later posted on DeviantArt have since been removed due to copyrights.

Please note

• The character(s) from the anime, manga, and/or video games in these Winamp skins are the property of their respective owners/companies/licensors (except for OpenTTD).
• You’ll need to use double sizing nowadays since wider screens have become the future and may not work on curved monitors.
• The DinoCity Winamp skin and the Mondo and Rockna Winamp skin look best when you put the windows side by side (Main, Equalizer, Playlist, others).
• There will not be any updates to the Winamp skins due to Radionomy discontinuing the use of skins in a future release.
• Ensure that the “Use skinned font for main window title display” is checked in the Preferences window as it is turned off by default (may be disabled in WACUP).
• Ensure that the “Use skin or language pack font” is checked in the Preferences window.

You can download my Winamp skins here from the Winamp Skin Museum (thanks to Jordan Eldrege for rescuing my Winamp skins before they were forgotten!). If you still prefer to download them via Dropbox, you can do so here. If you’re using any of my Winamp skins in action on Instagram or TikTok, don’t forget to tag me as @mrsamuraicory (Instagram) or @samuraicory_ (TikTok).

Update 2024.02.05: I noticed that there’s a bug on EQ_EX.bmp file on the OpenRCT2 skin as it can’t be fixed, since Adobe stopped support for CS6. Sorry!

Update 2024.02.22: Although I’m still offering the Winamp skins I’ve made for download for historical reasons, the Winamp Forums has since been shut down and most of the development team are gone. According to the forum moderator NJK, “Because the future of Winamp Forum is uncertain, we recommend that you download manuals or other explanations of problems with both Winamp and Shoutcast. So that you can always fall back on your own database if something does not work as it should​. There is no development team anymore, Shoutcast has been sold.” You can still use WACUP, but the ex-Winamp development team has since moved on. Winamp also has its own Discord community, but you won’t find the original Winamp development team or its original staff.

Just like before?

Thanks to Darren Owen, who is actively developing WACUP, you can now experience Winamp almost the way it was before the discontinuation and NFT times.

It requires:

• Windows 11 as an operating system;
• CPU with SSE2 support or better;
• The latest version of Winamp (Use the version 5.666 or version 5.8 in case if the version 5.92 has bugs);
• A working internet connection.

Although I no longer actively make or update Winamp skins, you can still follow me on social media on what I’m doing these days since Adobe has dropped support for Creative Suite. However, WACUP is not compatible with macOS operating systems.