Who owns Winamp today?
Winamp belongs to Winamp Group, a Belgian company run by chief executive Alexandre Saboundjian. The same business bought the player from AOL in January 2014 under the name Radionomy, traded as Llama Group through the 2024 source code release, and now carries the Winamp name itself.
That is three owners across the player's life. Nullsoft, the two-person company that wrote it. AOL, which paid about $80 million in stock for Nullsoft in June 1999. And the Belgian buyer that has held it since 2014.
The current plan was never to sell the old player. It is to turn the name into a business for musicians, and then to put a paid listening service behind it. In July 2026 the company announced that Deezer would supply the catalog and the streaming technology for a Winamp-branded subscription, with a rebuilt player due in the first half of 2027.
"Twenty-five years ago we changed the way people listened to digital music, and we believe the time has come to challenge the listening experience once again," Saboundjian said in that announcement.
How did a teenager's Windows project reach 60 million users?
Justin Frankel was 18 and had left college in Arizona when he wrapped a Windows interface around an existing MP3 decoding engine in 1997. The name was literal: Windows plus AMP. He built it with Dmitry Boldyrev under a two-person company called Nullsoft.
Winamp 2.0, released in September 1998, is the version people remember. It added a plug-in system, a usable playlist window and skins, and the skin archives turned a media player into something people decorated. The installer also carried an audio clip of a man announcing "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass," a line taken from the Chicago outsider musician Wesley Willis and his song "Whip the Llama's Ass."
The timing did the rest. MP3 files were spreading through IRC channels, FTP servers and, from June 1999, Napster, and every one of those files needed something to play it. Winamp had 15 million users when AOL bought Nullsoft in 1999, 25 million registered users by mid-2000, and about 60 million by 2001. No other media player on Windows was close.
Why did AOL pay $80 million and then shut Winamp down?
AOL bought Nullsoft in June 1999 for roughly $80 million in stock. On paper it fit: AOL wanted digital media, and Winamp was the most used media player on Windows. In practice the two cultures could not share a building.
Nullsoft kept shipping things AOL did not want shipped. Gnutella, a decentralized file sharing protocol, appeared in 2000 and was pulled almost immediately. WASTE, an encrypted peer-to-peer tool, appeared in 2003 and met the same end. Frankel resigned in January 2004, five years after the sale.
The product damage was self-inflicted. Winamp3, a 2002 rewrite on a new codebase, broke compatibility with Winamp 2 skins and plug-ins and ran slower than the version it replaced. Users refused it and kept downloading the old one. Nullsoft retreated with Winamp 5 in December 2003, merging the classic engine with the newer features and skipping version 4 entirely.
It was too late. iTunes and the iPod took over music libraries, and Windows Media Player came preinstalled on every PC. On November 20, 2013, AOL announced that Winamp.com and the player downloads would close on December 20, 2013, after 15 years.
What did Radionomy do with Winamp after 2014?
Radionomy, a Belgian internet radio company, bought Winamp and the Shoutcast streaming platform weeks before that deadline, with the deal confirmed in January 2014. TechCrunch reported the price at $5 million to $10 million in cash and shares, with AOL taking a 12 percent stake in Radionomy. AOL had paid about $80 million for Nullsoft fifteen years earlier.
"Winamp is a top independent player that gives millions of people the best player functionality available," Saboundjian said when the purchase was announced, promising builds for desktop, mobile, car systems and connected devices.
Most of that never arrived. A build numbered 5.8 leaked in 2018 and was then released officially, mainly as a compatibility fix for newer Windows versions. Winamp 5.9 followed in 2022 after a long rebuild of the codebase, and 5.9.2 shipped on April 26, 2023. That is still the current desktop release in September 2026, which puts the classic player more than three years past its last update.
What happened to the Winamp open source release?
In September 2024 the owner, then trading as Llama Group, put the Winamp desktop source code on GitHub. It was not open source in any accepted sense. The Winamp Collaborative License banned forking, which is both the normal way people work on GitHub and a requirement of GitHub's own terms.
Developers read the repository instead of using it. The license was revised to permit forking but not distribution, which fixed little. The published tree was then found to contain third-party code from companies including Dolby, Fraunhofer and Microsoft that Llama Group had no right to redistribute.
The company deleted every Winamp repository in October 2024, about three weeks after publishing them. Winamp is therefore not open source in 2026, and the code that briefly appeared carries no license anyone can build on. Community work on the classic player happens outside the official code instead: WACUP, the Winamp Community Update Project, is a separate modernization by an independent developer that patches and replaces parts of the 5.x player.
Where can you get Winamp in 2026, and what does it cost?
The legacy desktop player is still free and still offered at winamp.com, and version 5.9.2 installs and runs on Windows 10 and Windows 11. It plays local files, MP3 and FLAC included, along with Shoutcast internet radio. Milkdrop visualizations and the Winamp 2 skin format still work, which is why the skin archives have outlived several of the companies involved.
What changed is that the free player is no longer the product. Winamp for Creators sells musicians a website builder, a merchandising service and a fan subscription tool called Fanzone, which reached general availability in March 2026 at 50 euros or 55 dollars a year after an introductory free period. The company said in February 2026 that more than 35,000 artists from over 130 countries had signed up.
The listening side returns in 2027. Deezer supplies the catalog behind a paid Winamp subscription, and the announced player is meant to put streaming tracks next to local files, internet radio and podcasts in one window. Until it ships, the thing most people are searching for, a small free player that reads a folder of MP3s, is the April 2023 build.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Winamp still available to download in 2026?
Yes. Winamp 5.9.2, released on April 26, 2023, is still the current desktop build and is still free at winamp.com, where it installs on Windows 10 and Windows 11. It plays local MP3 and FLAC files and Shoutcast internet radio, and it still supports classic Winamp 2 skins and Milkdrop visualizations.
Why did AOL shut down Winamp?
AOL bought Winamp's developer Nullsoft in June 1999 for about $80 million in stock, then announced on November 20, 2013 that Winamp.com and the player would close on December 20, 2013. Winamp had lost its audience to iTunes, the iPod and Windows Media Player after the failed Winamp3 rewrite of 2002. AOL ended up selling the player to the Belgian company Radionomy in January 2014 rather than closing it.
Is Winamp open source?
No. Winamp's owner published the desktop source code on GitHub in September 2024 under a license that banned forking, then deleted the repositories about three weeks later in October 2024 after the code was found to include third-party material it could not redistribute. As of September 2026 Winamp is closed source, and the briefly published code carries no license anyone can build on.