"Say, that really DOES whip the llama's ass!"
September 20, 2017 1:23 PM Subscribe
someone please port this to win 10 using electron
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:38 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:38 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
Wow, it's been 18 years since Frankel sold NullSoft to AOL? I feel so old.
posted by octothorpe at 1:43 PM on September 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 1:43 PM on September 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
Does anyone remember an MP3 player called k-jofol? Now _that_ had some ugly skins. Especially since you could completely redo the entire interface in the skin, and give the app some bizarre shape via alpha transparency.
What are you talking about? k-jofol was great. Why limit yourself to a boring rectangle?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:47 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
What are you talking about? k-jofol was great. Why limit yourself to a boring rectangle?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:47 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
any portmanteau in a storm: Because all those crazy skins were almost universally ugly and had the controls in different places. WinAmp 2 skins were at least consistent in terms of button placement, even if you couldn't make them out on some.
posted by SansPoint at 1:50 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 1:50 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
I definitely spend a lot less time reading tutorials on making glossy plastic spheres in Photoshop these days.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 2:02 PM on September 20, 2017 [24 favorites]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 2:02 PM on September 20, 2017 [24 favorites]
Disappointed that the eject button brings up a file upload dialog but when I went and actually found an .mp3 file to upload it didn't load it into the player.
Fights urge to make.a PR for this feature while I'm at work.
posted by Space Coyote at 2:12 PM on September 20, 2017
Fights urge to make.a PR for this feature while I'm at work.
posted by Space Coyote at 2:12 PM on September 20, 2017
Disappointed that the eject button brings up a file upload dialog but when I went and actually found an .mp3 file to upload it didn't load it into the player.
That worked for me
posted by aubilenon at 2:23 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
That worked for me
posted by aubilenon at 2:23 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Space Coyote: works here (FF/Linux). (on both the eject button and the replacement upper left menu). Might be browser or local security policy constrained?
posted by cfraenkel at 2:23 PM on September 20, 2017
posted by cfraenkel at 2:23 PM on September 20, 2017
Worked for me with Chrome on OSX.
posted by octothorpe at 2:27 PM on September 20, 2017
posted by octothorpe at 2:27 PM on September 20, 2017
I don't miss Winamp. I still use it almost every day.
posted by davebush at 2:31 PM on September 20, 2017 [21 favorites]
posted by davebush at 2:31 PM on September 20, 2017 [21 favorites]
Huh weird, using safari technology preview. *shrug*
posted by Space Coyote at 2:35 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Space Coyote at 2:35 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't miss Winamp. I still use it almost every day.
Likewise! It's a better music player than anything else I've tried. (Sure, it hasn't been updated since 2013, but there's been no need to do so.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 2:44 PM on September 20, 2017
Likewise! It's a better music player than anything else I've tried. (Sure, it hasn't been updated since 2013, but there's been no need to do so.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 2:44 PM on September 20, 2017
now do napster
posted by entropicamericana at 2:45 PM on September 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 2:45 PM on September 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
I still use Winamp every day as well.
posted by fimbulvetr at 2:52 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 2:52 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Yup, Winamp was the best, most bullshit-free music player ever. Everything since then has been such a pain in the ass to deal with (for gods' sakes I just want to open some files, I don't know what problem this whole "import to library" paradigm is supposed to solve) that I actually listen to music less. The days of Winamp and Napster were a real golden age for music listeners, copyright issues notwithstanding. To this day, I think about 90% of what I listen to I discovered during that brief era.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:57 PM on September 20, 2017 [28 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:57 PM on September 20, 2017 [28 favorites]
I feel like the Winamp nostalgia is really misplaced excitement for a time of optimism when the internet really was going to make the world better and our lives richer, mostly due UNLIMTED FREE MUSIC! Instead of an affection for a terrible (although way less terrible than the Apple alternative) ugly fake stereo cluttering your desktop.
Instead we got Pepe and Nazis. And unlimited so cheap it`s almost free music (via Spotify).
posted by Keith Talent at 2:59 PM on September 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
Instead we got Pepe and Nazis. And unlimited so cheap it`s almost free music (via Spotify).
posted by Keith Talent at 2:59 PM on September 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
I don't know what problem this whole "import to library" paradigm is supposed to solve
The problem of you not being dependent on someone else's platform to access your music
posted by thelonius at 2:59 PM on September 20, 2017 [15 favorites]
The problem of you not being dependent on someone else's platform to access your music
posted by thelonius at 2:59 PM on September 20, 2017 [15 favorites]
I think this might be common with a lot of people, but I stopped "missing" Winamp after graduating from single tracks off KaZaA and House DJ sets off AudioGalaxy and moved towards full albums on disk, because Winamp2 was not made to manage long playlists. Because I had limited space, more often than not never had more than maybe 30-40 192k MP3 at the same time, plus bought CDs, which is fine for WinAmp. Once I got a bigger HD and started going for whole albums, discographies and bootleg collections and whatnot, the idea of using Explorer to find the album, drag and drop to WinAmp and play becomes a little less attractive.
Now that I think of it, I must be using Foobar 2000 for 14 years or so (although I didn't use the more advanced features for years: at the start I had two columns, on the left a list of playlists, on the right the playlist view). Moved some time after the shambolic release of Winamp3 and never looked back.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:06 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
Now that I think of it, I must be using Foobar 2000 for 14 years or so (although I didn't use the more advanced features for years: at the start I had two columns, on the left a list of playlists, on the right the playlist view). Moved some time after the shambolic release of Winamp3 and never looked back.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:06 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
What lmfsilva said! I mostly listen to albums, (locally stored at that), and iTunes is perfect for that. I’m even the weirdo who likes that Grid View they added a few versions ago. I just type the first couple letters of the artist name, double click on the art, and music plays. No need to navigate my file hierarchy.
I also use an app called Launchbar to just play an album by name if I know exactly what I want to listen to.
posted by SansPoint at 3:12 PM on September 20, 2017
I also use an app called Launchbar to just play an album by name if I know exactly what I want to listen to.
posted by SansPoint at 3:12 PM on September 20, 2017
I dunno, I used to have Winamp playlists with hundreds and hundreds of songs in them (like, all my electronica put into a playlist and set to "random" to play while I blew dudes up in Starsiege: Tribes) and they always seemed to work just fine. I would also frequently just ctrl+a the entire directory of my music, several thousand files at the time, and play it on shuffle for days at a time. Worked perfectly well for me.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:13 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:13 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Still using Winamp because it is convenient and trouble free. It is my music player of choice and works great in Windows 10. I can just click on a file in Explorer or anywhere and it opens up in Winamp. I believe in using the old tried and true. e.g. I'm still using WordPerfect and probably a bunch of other old programs that I am so used to that I don't even think about them.
posted by charlesminus at 3:16 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by charlesminus at 3:16 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
I mean, Winamp happened before consistent metadata in mp3s was really a thing so for sure keeping your stuff organized by album wasn't always that easy, but at this point (and for a long time now) Windows Explorer can read and display metadata natively. You can search for stuff by album right in your file picker, even if you don't have any kind of filesystem-level organizational scheme going on. I never understood what was so scary about the filesystem that users couldn't be allowed direct access to it. I have this problem with lots of modern software and all smartphone/tablet-style devices. It's not just files in folders anymore, everything's all balkanized and different and you have to learn how each individual app wants you to access and organize your stuff and there's a lot of stuff you just plain can't do or can't access which would be dead simple if you could just access the goddamn filesystem like God intended.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:19 PM on September 20, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:19 PM on September 20, 2017 [15 favorites]
We still use Winamp, we've never found anything better. I think we stick to Winamp 3? We get it from oldversions.com which hasn't given us malware yet.
A couple of years ago we looked around for a system that would organize our music for us (we still keep every album in its own folder, organized by artist, but it's getting kind of hectic among several different drives) but still let us easily play full albums without a lot of fussing with metadata, but it doesn't seem like music players have really evolved at all, it's just that people's listening habits have evolved instead.
posted by muddgirl at 3:20 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
A couple of years ago we looked around for a system that would organize our music for us (we still keep every album in its own folder, organized by artist, but it's getting kind of hectic among several different drives) but still let us easily play full albums without a lot of fussing with metadata, but it doesn't seem like music players have really evolved at all, it's just that people's listening habits have evolved instead.
posted by muddgirl at 3:20 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
I use winamp all the time too. I'm actually a bit bummed about it though because when installed on my current laptop, it crashes whenever I try to run visualizations. And I never remember to fix that because the only time I want visualizations I am drunk and that's not a good time for computer maintenance.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:20 PM on September 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:20 PM on September 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
Sad to say that I don't have any music files these days. Or I guess I do on some random harddrive but none that I've used in years. I had to dig around to find an mp3 file to use to test this thing.
posted by octothorpe at 3:21 PM on September 20, 2017
posted by octothorpe at 3:21 PM on September 20, 2017
Is it possible to be incredibly nostalgic for a thing but not actually miss it at all? Like, I have fond memories of the era back when WinAMP was a Thing, but I ultimately wound up dumping it for iTunes once that was available on Windows, because it turned out that I was one of those softcore pansies who preferred to organize music like a collection of songs based on metadata rather than as a collection of files (though I could understand if folks would prefer the file approach themselves).
On the other hand, iTunes never had an Earthbound-themed skin available, so that’s definitely a severe mark against. (Also iTunes for Windows rapidly turned into a garbage pile, but).
Man, though... I still remember the first MP3 I downloaded. It was the Bob-omb Battlefield music from Super Mario 64, and this was back in the day of MIDI files and maybe even WinGroove to add wavetable synthesis in hardware. I don’t really know what I was expecting from this new MP3 thing and this WinAMP program I’d downloaded, but I was blown away as my computer suddenly started playing (or, more accurately, tried playing — the 486 was not fully up to the task) an exact replica of how it had sounded coming out of an N64. At this point, I can scarcely even remember those days of reliance on MIDI files, with their small file sizes. I wonder if they’ll ever have a nostalgia comeback of some sort.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:27 PM on September 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
On the other hand, iTunes never had an Earthbound-themed skin available, so that’s definitely a severe mark against. (Also iTunes for Windows rapidly turned into a garbage pile, but).
Man, though... I still remember the first MP3 I downloaded. It was the Bob-omb Battlefield music from Super Mario 64, and this was back in the day of MIDI files and maybe even WinGroove to add wavetable synthesis in hardware. I don’t really know what I was expecting from this new MP3 thing and this WinAMP program I’d downloaded, but I was blown away as my computer suddenly started playing (or, more accurately, tried playing — the 486 was not fully up to the task) an exact replica of how it had sounded coming out of an N64. At this point, I can scarcely even remember those days of reliance on MIDI files, with their small file sizes. I wonder if they’ll ever have a nostalgia comeback of some sort.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:27 PM on September 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
Well, another advantage of a library-based app is that you don't have to do all that tedious manual organizing. Import your files, normalize the metadata (that is, if you're me, and anal about stuff like Sort Artist and correct year of release* and the like), and then you'll never have to dig through folders again to find it. And I was anal about folders, too: Artist (last name first)/Year - Album/01 - Song Title.mp3
Now I don't have to even bother.
* I don't care if it's a 2017 Deluxe Edition Re-Release, if the album originally came out in 1979, then it should have a year tag of 1979!
posted by SansPoint at 3:33 PM on September 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
Now I don't have to even bother.
* I don't care if it's a 2017 Deluxe Edition Re-Release, if the album originally came out in 1979, then it should have a year tag of 1979!
posted by SansPoint at 3:33 PM on September 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
* I don't care if it's a 2017 Deluxe Edition Re-Release, if the album originally came out in 1979, then it should have a year tag of 1979!
there should be a tag for recorded date and released date if you ask me*
* NOBODY EVER DOES
posted by entropicamericana at 3:38 PM on September 20, 2017 [14 favorites]
there should be a tag for recorded date and released date if you ask me*
* NOBODY EVER DOES
posted by entropicamericana at 3:38 PM on September 20, 2017 [14 favorites]
Filesystems can read metadata too, though? Like, I can open a folder with a bunch of randomly-labeled mp3 files in Windows Explorer, search or sort by Album Name or Release Date or whatever, and assuming the metadata is all present and correct it works just as well as in iTunes or similar.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:38 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:38 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
anal
Well, while we're at it, (and I'm talking to contributors to that online resource that iTunes hits when you import a CD):
- the name of a song does not change to "Song Name [Live Version]" when it is played live
- it does not change to "Song Name (feat. DJ Sphyncter)" because DJ Sphyncter was hired to do a verse. Nor should that song have a separate artist, although I can see that some folks might like that.
- when a CD has more than one disc, the title of the album and, indeed, the entire format of all the metadata fields, should not change from Disc 1 to Disc 2. The title of the album is not "Album Title [Disc 2] " for the second disc, there are metadata fields just for that information.
I'll stop there I think
posted by thelonius at 3:44 PM on September 20, 2017 [19 favorites]
Well, while we're at it, (and I'm talking to contributors to that online resource that iTunes hits when you import a CD):
- the name of a song does not change to "Song Name [Live Version]" when it is played live
- it does not change to "Song Name (feat. DJ Sphyncter)" because DJ Sphyncter was hired to do a verse. Nor should that song have a separate artist, although I can see that some folks might like that.
- when a CD has more than one disc, the title of the album and, indeed, the entire format of all the metadata fields, should not change from Disc 1 to Disc 2. The title of the album is not "Album Title [Disc 2] " for the second disc, there are metadata fields just for that information.
I'll stop there I think
posted by thelonius at 3:44 PM on September 20, 2017 [19 favorites]
And I was anal about folders, too: Artist (last name first)/Year - Album/01 - Song Title.mp3
Now I don't have to even bother.
Neither do I. It still bugs me how lazy I've become.
At this point, I can scarcely even remember those days of reliance on MIDI files, with their small file sizes. I wonder if they’ll ever have a nostalgia comeback of some sort.
Some vaporwave uses very raw, Roland Sound Canvas-like MIDI sounds.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:47 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Now I don't have to even bother.
Neither do I. It still bugs me how lazy I've become.
At this point, I can scarcely even remember those days of reliance on MIDI files, with their small file sizes. I wonder if they’ll ever have a nostalgia comeback of some sort.
Some vaporwave uses very raw, Roland Sound Canvas-like MIDI sounds.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:47 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Organizing by metadata has never worked for me for all the reasons thelonius lists and more (why are Neko Case albums separated from Neko Case and Her Boyfriends?), and the one-two punch of iTunes followed by streaming services means that developers were pretty uninterested in working on it.
posted by muddgirl at 3:50 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 3:50 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
I still use a winamp descendant (if being an xmms descendant counts) in the form of Audacious Media Player. I just have a single huge playlist (almost 50,000 entries), though I don't use the "Winamp classic interface" (still present as an option after all these years! My home computer probably still has the skin I used to use, too).
It works fine for albums, IME. If I want to listen to a specific album I just … do that.
posted by kenko at 3:50 PM on September 20, 2017
It works fine for albums, IME. If I want to listen to a specific album I just … do that.
posted by kenko at 3:50 PM on September 20, 2017
(Admittedly, I also have a separate database and some scripts to maintain and query it that allows me to easily find a particular album. But I use the filesystem for that just as often, because I know that my Kings of Convenience albums will live under ~/mp3/Kings of Convenience/.
posted by kenko at 3:51 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by kenko at 3:51 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Organizing by metadata has never worked for me for all the reasons thelonius lists and more (why are Neko Case albums separated from Neko Case and Her Boyfriends?)
(psst... the "sort artist" tag is your friend)
posted by entropicamericana at 3:54 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
(psst... the "sort artist" tag is your friend)
posted by entropicamericana at 3:54 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
why are Neko Case albums separated from Neko Case and Her Boyfriends
iTunes at least provides Album Artist and Sort Album Artist for this.
You know who really gets thrown under the bus? Classical music people. The whole metadata scheme is oriented to pop/rock/jazz albums.
posted by thelonius at 3:56 PM on September 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
iTunes at least provides Album Artist and Sort Album Artist for this.
You know who really gets thrown under the bus? Classical music people. The whole metadata scheme is oriented to pop/rock/jazz albums.
posted by thelonius at 3:56 PM on September 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
iTunes is also a garbage fire on Windows and always has been.
posted by muddgirl at 3:57 PM on September 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 3:57 PM on September 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
thelonius: My Classical Workaround is to put the composer as Album Artist, and the performer as Artist.
posted by SansPoint at 3:58 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by SansPoint at 3:58 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't know what problem this whole "import to library" paradigm is supposed to solve
Having the music in a library enables a bunch of ways of interacting with it (play me random stuff by this artist / in this genre / play random albums) that are difficult to do with the filesystem browser. It means the player already knows the metadata so if you load a playlist it doesn't have to scan 1200 files to display it. And my experience is that interacting through the filesystem is at least a little error-prone. When I try to drag a file or folder onto the player, some small percent of the time I'll accidentally move it somewhere dumb instead.
I sure don't want my player to move everything around for me, but even iTunes has the option to add music to its DB without moving the files.
posted by aubilenon at 4:01 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Having the music in a library enables a bunch of ways of interacting with it (play me random stuff by this artist / in this genre / play random albums) that are difficult to do with the filesystem browser. It means the player already knows the metadata so if you load a playlist it doesn't have to scan 1200 files to display it. And my experience is that interacting through the filesystem is at least a little error-prone. When I try to drag a file or folder onto the player, some small percent of the time I'll accidentally move it somewhere dumb instead.
I sure don't want my player to move everything around for me, but even iTunes has the option to add music to its DB without moving the files.
posted by aubilenon at 4:01 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
The Tragedy of iTunes and Classical Music
posted by thelonius at 4:02 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 4:02 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
even iTunes has the option to add music to its DB without moving the files.
this is the True Way to use iTunes. Import media to library? No. Organize my music? NO.
posted by thelonius at 4:03 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
this is the True Way to use iTunes. Import media to library? No. Organize my music? NO.
posted by thelonius at 4:03 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Rock over London. Rock on Chicago!
posted by zardoz at 4:08 PM on September 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 4:08 PM on September 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
What are people liking as a non-itunes music file player for Mac, nowadays? I've been subsisting on VLC, but it's pretty spartan.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 4:09 PM on September 20, 2017
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 4:09 PM on September 20, 2017
> Well, while we're at it, (and I'm talking to contributors to that online resource that iTunes hits when you import a CD):
Before:
Organizing classical music has defeated me. My classical library is a massive hot mess. This is not iTunes' fault, because all Apple's tried to do is provide the superset of ID3 tags that are mutually supported by all the file types that iTunes supports. And ID3 is a non-standard that a bunch of people worked really hard to make work but they were not information science experts, and now due to institutional adoption the format has ossified.
posted by ardgedee at 4:23 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Before:
- Song: Song Title [Carl Remix version][Live]
- Artist: Alice Feat. Bob
- Album: The Fifth Album [2016 remaster]
- Song: Song Title *
- Artist: Alice, Bob, Carl
- Album: The Fifth Album *
- Album Artist: Alice
- Date: 1999
- Notes: Performed by Alice Feat. Bob. Remixed by Carl. Live version. 2016 Remaster
Organizing classical music has defeated me. My classical library is a massive hot mess. This is not iTunes' fault, because all Apple's tried to do is provide the superset of ID3 tags that are mutually supported by all the file types that iTunes supports. And ID3 is a non-standard that a bunch of people worked really hard to make work but they were not information science experts, and now due to institutional adoption the format has ossified.
posted by ardgedee at 4:23 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Who really wants a WinAMP 4 skin?
(still my favorite bit of why they jumped from 3 to 5).
posted by deezil at 4:33 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
(still my favorite bit of why they jumped from 3 to 5).
posted by deezil at 4:33 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
You know who really gets thrown under the bus? Classical music people. The whole metadata scheme is oriented to pop/rock/jazz albums.
Mp3 metdata actually supports a pretty fairly comprehensive set of fields to describe a lot of music. There's fields for composer, lyricist, musician credits, lead/soloist, band/orchestra/accompaniment, & conductor. But I don't think they're very widely used.
there should be a tag for recorded date and released date if you ask me
There are ID3v2 tags to store when the track was "recorded", "released", "originally released", "encoded", and finally "tagged". But I don't think hardly anyone uses them.
posted by aubilenon at 4:33 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Mp3 metdata actually supports a pretty fairly comprehensive set of fields to describe a lot of music. There's fields for composer, lyricist, musician credits, lead/soloist, band/orchestra/accompaniment, & conductor. But I don't think they're very widely used.
there should be a tag for recorded date and released date if you ask me
There are ID3v2 tags to store when the track was "recorded", "released", "originally released", "encoded", and finally "tagged". But I don't think hardly anyone uses them.
posted by aubilenon at 4:33 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
What are people liking as a non-itunes music file player for Mac, nowadays?
Swinsian
posted by Lanark at 4:33 PM on September 20, 2017
Swinsian
posted by Lanark at 4:33 PM on September 20, 2017
Y'all talking like Winamp isn't a library-based player. It has a media library view, and it's great. Fairly customizable, and you can use filenames as a filtering criterion, which means you can organize your filesystem however you like to add structure to the library in a way iTunes and other library-based players never quite seem to do as elegantly.
Needless to say, I still use Winamp daily on multiple computers.
posted by chrominance at 4:39 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Needless to say, I still use Winamp daily on multiple computers.
posted by chrominance at 4:39 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Hmm, it's quite possible to allow users to play local mp3s in a browser without actually uploading them, I've made such a player myself. It skips the long upload process, and skirts any copyright issues for the site owner. Perhaps if I get bored I'll make a pull request to add the option.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 5:07 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 5:07 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
chrominance, now that you mention it you're right—there is a Media Library thingy in Winamp. I just never used it, so I forgot about it! Also, I seem to recall that it was a later addition? I think when I first started using Winamp it didn't have that pane, which is probably why when it appeared I didn't feel the need to use it; I was already comfortable with my existing workflow, and it still worked the same as always.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:20 PM on September 20, 2017
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:20 PM on September 20, 2017
Hmm, it's quite possible to allow users to play local mp3s in a browser without actually uploading them, I've made such a player myself. It skips the long upload process, and skirts any copyright issues for the site owner. Perhaps if I get bored I'll make a pull request to add the option.
I'm pretty sure it's already doing this.
I think when I first started using Winamp it didn't have that pane
I believe they added the media library in 1998, along with a bunch of other plugins.
posted by aubilenon at 5:29 PM on September 20, 2017
I'm pretty sure it's already doing this.
I think when I first started using Winamp it didn't have that pane
I believe they added the media library in 1998, along with a bunch of other plugins.
posted by aubilenon at 5:29 PM on September 20, 2017
I'm pretty sure it's already doing this.
Ah, yes, I think you're right. The approach I am familiar with is built around dragging-and-dropping the files into the browser window. I didn't realize it was possible via the open file dialog, but I just tested and it seems to be playing locally.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 5:34 PM on September 20, 2017
Ah, yes, I think you're right. The approach I am familiar with is built around dragging-and-dropping the files into the browser window. I didn't realize it was possible via the open file dialog, but I just tested and it seems to be playing locally.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 5:34 PM on September 20, 2017
because I know that my Kings of Convenience albums will live under ~/mp3/Kings of Convenience/
+1 for using the artist's name in a discussion of arrangements and convenience, and also for good taste.
posted by wildblueyonder at 5:49 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
+1 for using the artist's name in a discussion of arrangements and convenience, and also for good taste.
posted by wildblueyonder at 5:49 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
You know who really gets thrown under the bus? Classical music people. The whole metadata scheme is oriented to pop/rock/jazz albums.
Almost everything you read about classical metadata is wrong:
posted by kenko at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Almost everything you read about classical metadata is wrong:
4) We do not need more fields(Emphasis added.)
It’s easy to suggest it’ll fix everything, but until we can display the fields we have properly, adding more will make things worse, not better.
Worst-case scenario, we need three fields: Album title, track title, artist names.
We can put the composer and work title in the track title thus:
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 1 in C Op. 21: 1. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio (1967 recording)
We wrote it all on the back of the physical CD, and nobody whined about that. Just writing it all in the database wouldn’t be fatal. What’s important is (a) making sure you can see it and (b) making sure you can search it. There’s a much better chance of all the important data getting searched if you put it in the places the search engine is already looking.
posted by kenko at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
I use Winamp 5.6.2, daily. Best audio player I have. It's cool though that someone created an HTML5 version.
posted by rmmcclay at 6:00 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by rmmcclay at 6:00 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
kenko: Thing is, with Classical, are you deciding what to put on based on the performer, or the composer? For me, it's composer. The way I look up everything in my music library is by the performing artist, but since the performing artist doesn't really matter for deciding what to put on, I put the composer in as Album Artist.
If a disc contains multiple composers, that gets tricky, though.
posted by SansPoint at 6:13 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
If a disc contains multiple composers, that gets tricky, though.
posted by SansPoint at 6:13 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
I use winamp all the time too. I'm actually a bit bummed about it though because when installed on my current laptop, it crashes whenever I try to run visualizations. And I never remember to fix that because the only time I want visualizations I am drunk and that's not a good time for computer maintenance.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666
You went past Ballmer's Peak. That's the problem.
posted by symbioid at 6:22 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666
You went past Ballmer's Peak. That's the problem.
posted by symbioid at 6:22 PM on September 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
We wrote it all on the back of the physical CD, and nobody whined about that.
Characterizing people's complaints as "whining" is the first resort of the scoundrel
posted by thelonius at 7:26 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Characterizing people's complaints as "whining" is the first resort of the scoundrel
posted by thelonius at 7:26 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
As a Mac user, before iTunes/iPod arrived it was all about Audion. (Backstory; downloads; skins/faces.) Supposedly the mp3 decoder had a nice "warm" sound, which will surely become fodder for the digital audiophiles of the next century.
Lately I gave up on iTunes and have been enjoying my Plex server as a media library/multidevice streaming solution that works great out of the box, and allows for lots of metadata fiddling if I'm in the mood.
posted by cosmologinaut at 9:08 PM on September 20, 2017
Lately I gave up on iTunes and have been enjoying my Plex server as a media library/multidevice streaming solution that works great out of the box, and allows for lots of metadata fiddling if I'm in the mood.
posted by cosmologinaut at 9:08 PM on September 20, 2017
I am suddenly reminded of the many weird things I was briefly very into making/ pretty skilled in doing as a teenager, chief among which were Buffy the Vampire Slayer themed skins for various programs including Winamp and ICQ.
I had completely forgotten the hours spent looking up tutorials and trying to get controls and gradients just right.
posted by halcyonday at 11:34 PM on September 20, 2017
I had completely forgotten the hours spent looking up tutorials and trying to get controls and gradients just right.
posted by halcyonday at 11:34 PM on September 20, 2017
I've always thought it was "WinAmp, it really whips the lover's ass".
posted by Laotic at 11:44 PM on September 20, 2017
posted by Laotic at 11:44 PM on September 20, 2017
We wrote it all on the back of the physical CD, and nobody whined about that.
Even in the days of physical record stores and stacks of battered LPs at your local public library, classical music filing and cateloguing was really messy. Because the recordings themselves were oriented around complementary performances, historic affinity, conductors or orchestras in common, total playing times that fit on a disc, etc. They do not make tidy productized packages the way pop music albums did for decades.
Really our ideas of music being released in the form of an album which is the work of a cohesive entity we term a performer are artifacts of 20th century technology and commerce more than anything inherent in music itself. My guess is that pop music will also become untidy as albums and labels become less and less relevant.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:00 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Even in the days of physical record stores and stacks of battered LPs at your local public library, classical music filing and cateloguing was really messy. Because the recordings themselves were oriented around complementary performances, historic affinity, conductors or orchestras in common, total playing times that fit on a disc, etc. They do not make tidy productized packages the way pop music albums did for decades.
Really our ideas of music being released in the form of an album which is the work of a cohesive entity we term a performer are artifacts of 20th century technology and commerce more than anything inherent in music itself. My guess is that pop music will also become untidy as albums and labels become less and less relevant.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:00 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I sometimes feel like I must have won some secret lottery from Steve Jobs, as I have been using iTunes on Windows, Mac, and back to Windows (using the same Library, mind you) to sync thousands of songs to what must be dozens of iPods, iPhones and iPads since the early 2000s and I've never had more than a passing annoyance with it. I really don't understand what people are saying when they talk about what a garbage fire it is.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:37 AM on September 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Rock Steady at 7:37 AM on September 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
I should add, it's not that I don't believe people, I've just never ever had that experience.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:38 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Rock Steady at 7:38 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Having run at the classical music metadata/player wall a few times and got the lumpy head to prove it, plus being in possession of a LOT of blog-downloaded MP3s of dazzingly obscure origin (some obsessions are not healthy), I have concluded that I need the machines to do my listening for me. I have a big data set in the actual digital music, it maps onto another big (and very badly defined, disparate and decentralised) data set which describes that music, and classifying data sets in terms of each other sounds like just the job for all this machine learning/AI/NN stuff we're being told can stamp-collect with the best.
Some days I want to listen to every version of Dido's Lament in my never-ending quest to find the perfect vocal, others I just want to listen to that weird half-remembered song that has "You must take off your shoes" as a repeated motif, or everything a particular musician played on between 1975 and 1980, or... all that information is out there, but humans are terrible at metadata.
And everyone needs to avoid the sort of CDDB-Gracenote shambles, so perhaps it really would be best to let the machines slug it out in public.
(I was so happy when WinAmp made it onto the Play store. I was so unhappy when it turned into a malware spout. Bah, humbug.)
posted by Devonian at 7:41 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Some days I want to listen to every version of Dido's Lament in my never-ending quest to find the perfect vocal, others I just want to listen to that weird half-remembered song that has "You must take off your shoes" as a repeated motif, or everything a particular musician played on between 1975 and 1980, or... all that information is out there, but humans are terrible at metadata.
And everyone needs to avoid the sort of CDDB-Gracenote shambles, so perhaps it really would be best to let the machines slug it out in public.
(I was so happy when WinAmp made it onto the Play store. I was so unhappy when it turned into a malware spout. Bah, humbug.)
posted by Devonian at 7:41 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Nobody else plays their music from the terminal?
I have a bash function that invokes vlc to play arg.flac or arg/*.flac, as appropriate. I don't really use playlists, but I guess I could make a directory of symlinks.
Anyway, it's a better solution than iTunes, which can't even play FLACs.
posted by ryanrs at 8:19 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I have a bash function that invokes vlc to play arg.flac or arg/*.flac, as appropriate. I don't really use playlists, but I guess I could make a directory of symlinks.
Anyway, it's a better solution than iTunes, which can't even play FLACs.
posted by ryanrs at 8:19 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
some obsessions are not healthy
The era of mp3 blogs, with links to Rapidshare etc, is pretty thoroughly dead now, right? Those download sites just kept getting sketchier and sketchier looking, for one.
posted by thelonius at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2017
The era of mp3 blogs, with links to Rapidshare etc, is pretty thoroughly dead now, right? Those download sites just kept getting sketchier and sketchier looking, for one.
posted by thelonius at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2017
ryanrs: When I know exactly what album I want to put on, I just hit Cmd-Space to open LaunchBar, type a few characters, and hit return. iTunes immediately begins playing it. That's kind of a command line thing, I suppose.
As for FLAC, I can't tell the difference in audio quality between a v0 MP3, a 256kbps M4A, and a FLAC file, so I don't listen to FLAC. I do keep FLAC for archival purposes, namely for my collection of Bootleg Recordings, but anything that goes into the regular listening cycle gets transcoded to a v0 MP3.
posted by SansPoint at 9:53 AM on September 21, 2017
As for FLAC, I can't tell the difference in audio quality between a v0 MP3, a 256kbps M4A, and a FLAC file, so I don't listen to FLAC. I do keep FLAC for archival purposes, namely for my collection of Bootleg Recordings, but anything that goes into the regular listening cycle gets transcoded to a v0 MP3.
posted by SansPoint at 9:53 AM on September 21, 2017
There are ID3v2 tags to store when the track was "recorded", "released", "originally released", "encoded", and finally "tagged". But I don't think hardly anyone uses them.
Well, I use MP3Tag and when I get new music I use it to look up all the metadata on either Discogs or Musicbrainz and write it to those ID3v2 tags. MP3Tag has scripting, so I wrote some that normalize all the tags to my preferences, auto-rename all the files, and so on.
I use foobar2k as my player and I like it a lot, mostly because it's so extensible. BTW, for those who haven't looked at visualizations in the era of GeForce 1080 and a 60" or larger 1080p screen running Milkdrop -- well, it's amazing. There is a foobar2k plugin that allows you to run WinAmp visualizations. I made this video with screen capture and then Premiere. It's only worth watching the 60fps version (I locked both the rendering and screencap to 60fps and sent the 1080p 60fps to YouTube.)
Also, if anyone cares, I always get FLACs, set the tags and filenames as above, then use foobar2k and Lame to make MP3s. I have separate FLAC and MP3 collections, depending upon uses that favor small size or high quality. Finally, I have all my music uploaded to both Google Play Music and Amazon Music, so I just stream from those on my portable devices. Well, my music is also available to stream anywhere via my Plex server. I don't see any reason to switch to using streaming playlists -- I like listening via an album collection. I do use streaming mixes to either make mixes from my music or to discover or check-out new music.
TFA: I continue to be amazed, though I shouldn't be, what now can be done in a browser. I'm enough of a dinosaur to find this very cool. BTW, I am pretty sure that the library stuff was added to WinAmp v2, which was when it seemed be bloated to me and it lost its charm. I think I used the earlier version for many years, instead.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:57 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Well, I use MP3Tag and when I get new music I use it to look up all the metadata on either Discogs or Musicbrainz and write it to those ID3v2 tags. MP3Tag has scripting, so I wrote some that normalize all the tags to my preferences, auto-rename all the files, and so on.
I use foobar2k as my player and I like it a lot, mostly because it's so extensible. BTW, for those who haven't looked at visualizations in the era of GeForce 1080 and a 60" or larger 1080p screen running Milkdrop -- well, it's amazing. There is a foobar2k plugin that allows you to run WinAmp visualizations. I made this video with screen capture and then Premiere. It's only worth watching the 60fps version (I locked both the rendering and screencap to 60fps and sent the 1080p 60fps to YouTube.)
Also, if anyone cares, I always get FLACs, set the tags and filenames as above, then use foobar2k and Lame to make MP3s. I have separate FLAC and MP3 collections, depending upon uses that favor small size or high quality. Finally, I have all my music uploaded to both Google Play Music and Amazon Music, so I just stream from those on my portable devices. Well, my music is also available to stream anywhere via my Plex server. I don't see any reason to switch to using streaming playlists -- I like listening via an album collection. I do use streaming mixes to either make mixes from my music or to discover or check-out new music.
TFA: I continue to be amazed, though I shouldn't be, what now can be done in a browser. I'm enough of a dinosaur to find this very cool. BTW, I am pretty sure that the library stuff was added to WinAmp v2, which was when it seemed be bloated to me and it lost its charm. I think I used the earlier version for many years, instead.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:57 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's amazing that parts of that are pretty much exactly the same as what Cthugha did in 94. I guess cool effects are still cool even if they don't need more than a 386 to compute*
* at 320 x 200
posted by aubilenon at 12:50 PM on September 21, 2017
* at 320 x 200
posted by aubilenon at 12:50 PM on September 21, 2017
The era of mp3 blogs, with links to Rapidshare etc, is pretty thoroughly dead now, right?
Sadly, yes. I have such fond memories of those blogs. Mutant Sounds and Fauni Gena - RIP.
posted by davebush at 5:15 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Sadly, yes. I have such fond memories of those blogs. Mutant Sounds and Fauni Gena - RIP.
posted by davebush at 5:15 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I made my own skins. They were beautiful.
If your skins were bad, you needed better skins.
posted by jb at 8:44 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
If your skins were bad, you needed better skins.
posted by jb at 8:44 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Sadly, yes. I have such fond memories of those blogs. Mutant Sounds and Fauni Gena - RIP.
The last one I really got into was sublime. It was like a really hip record store in Eastern Europe in 1980. Can't remember the name. It had a lot of foreign links and I knew I was probably getting ownz0rd but I didn't even care.
posted by thelonius at 8:46 PM on September 21, 2017
The last one I really got into was sublime. It was like a really hip record store in Eastern Europe in 1980. Can't remember the name. It had a lot of foreign links and I knew I was probably getting ownz0rd but I didn't even care.
posted by thelonius at 8:46 PM on September 21, 2017
Anyway, it's a better solution than iTunes, which can't even play FLACs.Still technically true as of this writing! The new macOS coming out next week adds system-level FLAC support, though, which seems like a nice gesture.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:40 AM on September 22, 2017
DoctorFedora: Oh, that's neat! I'll still need to drop FLAC stuff into VLC to play, but at least I'll be able to Quicklook to preview them. And I wouldn't be surprised if iTunes finally dies, its replacement has FLAC support.
Though I'd still keep my primary library in v0 MP3/256kbps AAC, if only because I can't hear the difference and it's more space efficient for my phone.
posted by SansPoint at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
Though I'd still keep my primary library in v0 MP3/256kbps AAC, if only because I can't hear the difference and it's more space efficient for my phone.
posted by SansPoint at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
I can't hear the difference either, but I want to keep seeding.
posted by ryanrs at 9:08 AM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 9:08 AM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
ryanrs: Even the FLACs I get that fall off a truck, I convert to v0 for iTunes.
And then I keep the FLACs in a separate folder to seed.
posted by SansPoint at 9:28 AM on September 22, 2017
And then I keep the FLACs in a separate folder to seed.
posted by SansPoint at 9:28 AM on September 22, 2017
Another user of Winamp here. Works mostly fine in Win10... with the exception of easily-ignorable error dialogs thrown during shutdown.
I've been using the Steel This Amp skin from Steve Moss *forever*. His skins were beautiful! To be honest, I get confused trying to navigate the default Winamp skin.
posted by gox3r at 3:10 PM on September 22, 2017
I've been using the Steel This Amp skin from Steve Moss *forever*. His skins were beautiful! To be honest, I get confused trying to navigate the default Winamp skin.
posted by gox3r at 3:10 PM on September 22, 2017
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Those skins, though, I do _not_ miss.
Does anyone remember an MP3 player called k-jofol? Now _that_ had some ugly skins. Especially since you could completely redo the entire interface in the skin, and give the app some bizarre shape via alpha transparency.
posted by SansPoint at 1:37 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]