BIOS: Technology Means Business

Once a dominant player in online music, Winamp continues to be a popular application for digital media enthusiasts who like its sleekness and unobtrusiveness. While hardly the most intuitive jukebox software available, Winamp 5.0 is full of features and is highly customisable. However, the marketing might of Microsoft, Musicmatch, RealNetworks and Apple Computer will likely reduce its market share further, especially as Windows Media and QuickTime are both bundled into Microsoft and Apple's operating systems, respectively, and Musicmatch is a popular choice for manufacturers of multimedia peripherals. Still, it's definitely worth downloading the free version before deciding whether you need the features of the Pro version.

Pros: Highly customisable; requires minimal system resources
Cons: Doesn't support DVDs, label printing or audio players

Winamp is a multimedia jukebox that allows you to play music and video files, as well as Internet radio and TV. Similar to the popular Musicmatch Jukebox, a version of the software is available for free, whereas the Pro version ($14.99) lets you rip and encode MP3 tracks using Fraunhofer Institute's engine and burn CDs using Dolby's Advanced Audio Coding format. The free version of Winamp 5.0 will only let you rip CDs at 2X in AAC format.

Winamp is an extremely popular tool for playing audio tracks, thanks mainly to its strong developer community and range of downloadable skins that allow you to change the look and 'feel' of software. It's readily available for download too, and a file size of just 654KB (Lite version) or 4.01MB (full free version) makes it an almost compulsive download. However, it won't suite those looking for fully-comprehensive multimedia jukebox software because it doesn't support DVD-Movies or DVD-Audio, CD label printing or online purchasing of music tracks.

Nullsoft, the original developer of Winamp, was acquired by AOL in 1999 to help jump-start its online music strategy. One of the key changes AOL has implemented is to ditch Nullsoft's own programming language, called 'Wasabi', which was introduced with Winamp 3.0. The main reason for removing the code was because it caused the software to be a lot slower than previous versions. This was particularly bad because Winamp is best known for its sleekness, minimal use of system resources and unobtrusiveness.

Like previous iterations, Winamp 5.0 is designed let you manage music and video libraries. The software can also be used to quickly access Shoutcast radio stations, allowing you to listen to other people's song lists or broadcast your own. There's a similar video-streaming service, too.

All the leading audio and video formats are supported, including MP3, WMA, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, ASF, MWV, MPEG and AVI. You can, of course, also play audio CDs directly from your optical drive. Similar to other music jukebox software you can view videos and visualisations in their own resizable windows, as well as album, song and artist information while listening. Playlists are created with ease, but there's no support for copying playlists to a portable digital audio player. Other limitations include the inability to create personalised montages of photos and graphics that play along with your music, CD label printing, or support for line-in recording to extract audio from vinyl, cassettes or any other source. Unlike offerings from Apple, Musicmatch and Microsoft, there's no option to buy low-cost audio tracks online, either.

Links:
Winamp 5.0 download (654KB or 4.01MB)