The AOL APIs: WinAmp

WinAMP is among the lesser known AOL APIs, but it's clear that the project is active and work is ongoing. What's WinAmp? A media player -- essentially a music player for your Windows PC, that features a playlist editor, visualizations, skin options, color themes, etc.

So, what sets WinAmp apart from the mainstream MP3 players (Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, iTunes)? Well, if you're a developer, WinAmp belongs to you. You can't change anything about those other "interfaces" to your MP3 music. But WinAmp is entirely customizable. Hence, its inclusion on the AOL Developer Network APIs page.

WinAmp's Origins

What's WinAmp? Well, here's the story of the entity that created WinAmp, NullSoft, which is described as "One part genius. Three parts llama. And a sprinkling of corporate AOL." If you go to WinAmp.com/about/story, you'll find:

Winamp.com is home to the beloved Winamp Media player. This powerful little toy was the brainchild of diabolical genius and self-made llama philanthropist Justin Frankel. Justin had but one goal in mind while coding the early versions of Winamp. He wanted to spread his proverbial seed (referring to the dna of Winamp obviously). Once that goal was realized (thank goodness), Justin decided to give the player away so that the rest of us could find that ever-elusive thang known as amore. This was a daunting task and Justin was extremely lazy. He decided to bring new friends into the fold so that he could concentrate on his new preoccupation of doing doughnuts in his truck and driving hot cars. And so Nullsoft was born.

Team Nullsoft, in October of 1999, all six fruity flavors. [from WinAmp.com/about/story]

Visit the Nullsoft Team page for more details on the WinAmp developers.

The current WinAmp release is Version 5.3. There is a basic version (free) and a Pro version ($19.95 US), which offers additional features including ripping and faster CD burning capability.

Customizing WinAmp

So, now that we've "proven" that "real" people are behind WinAmp, let's look at the options they've provided for customizing WinAmp (and sharing your customizations with others).

Skins

More than 3500 skins are now available for the WinAmp Media Player. What does this say to you? To me, it says there is a significant community that loves the WinAmp player; and it also says to me that the capability WinAmp provides for developing new skins is indeed a superbly designed API. How else could you possibly get so many submissions of skins by the community?

If you'd like to try making your own WinAmp skin, there are two tutorials available:

• Classic Skins - skins that are compatible with WinAmp 2.x
• Modern Skins - skins compatible with WinAmp 3.x through the latest 5.x releases

Plug-Ins

About 3000 WinAmp plug-ins are currently available! In my opinion, that's an incredible number of options for users of a downloadable product! So, what do you need if you'd like to create a WinAmp plug-in?

• Knowledge of C/C++ programming
• a good compiler
• WIN32 platform

The Writing Plug-Ins page describes the types of plug-ins that can be written and provides your starting point.

Submitting Your Work

If you develop a WinAmp skin or plug-in, you are invited to submit it to the WinAmp team, for inclusion on their site. Pretty cool!

Conclusion

WinAmp is a media player that was created by a coder who found some fellow coders, and it took off, spawned an active user and developer community, and eventually earned AOL's interest. Today, if you visit the WinAmp Forums page, you'll see quite active discussions on a dozen or so different threads. That's exciting. People seem to love this little application, which is so incredibly customizable! It's so wonderful to see something like this!

-- Kevin Farnham
O'Reilly Media