Ah yes, back when mp3 player applications did one thing and one thing well.
Now we have iTunes.
Now we have iTunes.
I'm pretty sure you're thinking about Winamp 3 or 5. Winamp 2, upon release (in 1998!) had no such feature IIRC. It didn't even have a "Library view" of all your MP3s, it only had a very rudimentary playlist.
The main thing about Winamp 2 was that it was fast. For example, the skins were just bitmaps (none of the crazy theming that Winamp3 enabled). The visualizations were delivered by a set of plugins -- all of which you could get rid of.
I also believe that WinAmp just sounds better. Even after playing with the EQ on iTunes, I can't get it to sound as good as WinAmp.
I really dislike iTunes, but I find this claim hard to believe. In the audiophile community, we usually test such claims with double blind tests. Interestingly enough, a metal wire coat hanger held up just as well against $100 premium Monster audio cables.
It eventually got some bloat with new features but the features they added were pretty nice, like ability to burn discs.
I do miss that app. I could possibly get it going in WINE, I guess.
Now i'm afraid of touching the media control keys of my keyboard and risk launching it.
Android does support unofficial app distribution as well though. If someone gives you a .apk of their app you can just copy it to the phone and select it from the file browser to install it. You can update apps installed from the Play Store in this way as well, just the first install needs to be done the official way to get the license loaded.
Music is just files, you can copy them on and off the device in basically the same way as an old MP3 player unless you bought from a DRM-based provider in which case they'll be "protected" somewhere else.
There's no real need for an iTunes-like setup with Android. Your PC has no need to be involved in the app installation process and everything else is just normal files you can manage with the file manager you already have.
though its 70k points/year makes it the most expensive reward.
There is a glaring downside to that service though. I can't open the website to stream the music from ubuntu. The website just doesn't load.
- http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/decoders_winamp2_62.html
- https://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/
Most versions of Winamp 2.x had their own Nitrane decoder which is "inaccurate", some versions had Fraunhoffer decoder which is ok. However, I'm not sure if differences in sound are noticeable on non-high-end hardware, some people say that very noticeable.
Also, UI was super-cool and iconic but usability was not the first concern (back then, software had to be cool and spectacular, everyone used screensavers and players had to include visualizations). It was very small (I used 800x600 resolution but it looked too small), it relied on Windows file select dialog to add tracks and file select dialog is one of the slowest and most frustrating UIs in most OSes.