After 15 years of llama-whipping, AOL shuts down Winamp for good

Winamp, the storied MP3 player bought by AOL in June 1999 for over $80 million, is set to shut down in exactly one month. According to a post that went live Wednesday at 12:00pm ET on the Winamp website:

On Wednesday, Ars confirmed the announcement withGeno Yoham, Winamp’s general director since October 2008. He declined immediate comment but said that he would try to arrange a future interview.

Ars wrote an extensive feature on the rise and fall of Winamp in June 2012, detailing AOL’s mismanagement of the property since its dotcom-boom acquisition. As we reported then, Winamp continued to receive updates and make a tiny amount of money for AOL throughout the last 15 years. AOL even released the first Android version in 2010 and a Mac version in 2011.

While the company has declined to release official figures, former employees who worked on Winamp estimate its current revenue at around $6 million annually. And Winamp still has an estimated user base of millions worldwide, a small fraction of which live in the United States. All of that appears to be water under the bridge now.

“There's no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,” Rob Lord, the first hire and first general manager of Winamp, told Ars in 2012.

Justin Frankel, Winamp's primary developer, seemed to concur in an interview he gave to BetaNews. (He declined to be interviewed by Ars in 2012.) “I'm always hoping that they will come around and realize that they're killing [Winamp] and find a better way, but AOL always seems too bogged down with all of their internal politics to get anything done.”

Ars is currently reaching out to former Winamp employees and developers as this story develops. If that includes you, please get in touch.

UPDATE 2:57pm ET: Doug Serton, an AOL spokesperson, told Ars: "We decline to comment beyond the note posted on the site earlier."

Venture capitalist Josh Felser, who founded Spinner.com, another online music property that was acquired by AOL at the same time as Winamp, told Ars, "Such a bummer. [AOL] had been trying to sell it for months... Spinner was shut down first. It's the end of Music 1.0."

Felser added that he recently seriously considered buying Winamp from AOL, too.

"I spoke with the [corporate development] folks at AOL a couple times. Even reached out to [Winamp creator] Justin [Frankel], who was totally not interested. I think we talked about $5 million with some trailing equity."

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...

MoviePass drops pricing to under $7 per month, if you opt for the annual plan

MoviePass, the subscription service that lets consumers pay a monthly fee to see unlimited movies in theaters across the U.S., is slashing its prices yet again. The company announced today it’s now offering its service for $6.95 per month, down from the current price of $9.95 per month, when customers commit to a one-year subscription plan. That works out to a flat fee of $89.95 annually. The deal is a limited-time promotion, as opposed to a permanent pricing change, but MoviePass didn’t say how long the offer is valid. However, it is open to both new and existing subscribers – the latter who would receive a 25 percent savings on their current subscription if switching over to the annual plan. This is not the first time that MoviePass has dropped its pricing. When the company introduced its $9.95 per month, one-movie-per-day plan this August, down from $15 for 2 movies per month (or more in select markets like L.A. and NYC, and going as high as $50), it saw so many new sign-up...

ASUS VivoBook X202E Windows 8 Touchscreen Laptop Review And Giveaway

It wasn’t very long ago when prices of touchscreen Windows 8 laptops soared beyond $1000. Thankfully, those days are behind us, and portable computers can easily be purchased – touchscreen and all – for under $500. That’s precisely the demographic in which the ASUS VivoBook X202E falls. When compared to a high-end laptop, its specifications might seem modest, but for laptop buyers just looking for a way to browse the web, watch videos, use basic apps, and not spend too much money, something in this budget is perfectly suitable. The question is, of course, how does the ASUS VivoBook X202E compare to others on the market, and is it the one which you should be spending your hard-earned money on? Well, you’re just going to have to keep reading to find out. Best of all, we are giving away an ASUS VivoBook X202E to one lucky winner. Keep reading for your chance to take home this Windows 8 touchscreen laptop! Introducing the ASUS VivoBook X202E Laptop The ASUS VivoBook X202...

Kiran Upadhyay

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