Winamp Media Player To be Shut Down Next Month

The shutting down of the Winamp player has been scheduled to December 20, 2013. The 15 year old audio player that was quite popular among the teenagers because of its variety of Skins now will soon become a memory.

The music streaming services once boasted of a user base of over 50 million. The most widely used Internet services for listening to music and radio streams were quite popular back in early 2000 but since the advent of the iTunes and Windows Media Player in the Web it started fading out.

According to a brief note on the Winamp website, the formerly uber-popular media player will no longer be available for download after Dec. 20, 2013. This includes Winamp.com and associated Web services.

The player was in fact developed by a former University of Utah college students Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev. It was first launched 1997, and quickly gained popularity alongside the rise of MP3 file sharing. Soon AOL acquired Winamp in 1999. But sadly after a long run covering 15 years of successful tenure, the player will soon stop to function.

However, giving another ray of hope to the users, according to reports, Microsoft seems to be showing keen interest in picking up Winamp as well as Shoutcast from AOL.