I've never really gotten into playing music on my phone, for one reason or another. That ends today, with Nullsoft's Winamp hitting the Android Market in a beta version. That's right, the same Winamp that was my very first desktop player some 13 years ago (back when a 6-megabyte music file didn't seem to make any sense).
So what do we get here? A simple but powerful multimedia player, complete with widget and homescreen music controls. And, best of all, is the ability to add music to your phone over Wifi. Syncing music (or anything, for that matter) has never been terribly easy on Android. With Winamp, it's just a few clicks.
You really have to see this in action. Full video review of Winamp and Wifi sync is after the break, folks, along with download links.
61 Comments
First, I am pleased to see my days in the dorm are back again. Ah Winamp I thought you were gone forever... Now time to play some more Sega Genesis
Doesn't it need at least Andy 2.1?
Awesome, but I'd love to see some locked screen controls...I'll probably continue using HTC's media player until we get that from them.
It does, you just need to go into settings and check the box that says "Use lock-screen player".
NICE! I was waiting a a great player to come to android that offered me wireless syncing. I haven't used Winamp in forever and this is my reason to reload it onto my system. Wonderful! It looks a lot nicer on the phone in person than it does in the video, Phil what happened to the HD videos!?
You can download Album Art Grabber from the Market to get all your Album Art. It's free and does a pretty good job.
I'd be interested to see how well it identifies file headers (song name, artist, etc.) I have a variety of mp3's, wav's, etc. collected over time, and I haven't found a player that can read all the headers. Most players will play them all, but I can't use finds and filters reliably.
I remember Winamp! If I recall correctly it really whipped the llama's ass. . . . .
Still does. Hell, that's the first thing you hear on boot. Thank god, that doesn't pop up in any playlists after that.
I won't use ever use it as my regular music player until it has an equalizer as good as the stock Fascinate music player's.
AWESOME!! I have always loved Winamp...and still use it almost every day on my pc. This will be a great addition to my EVO. Thank you Nullsoft.
And how can you not be a fan of something that really whips the llama's ass?!
Awesome post - Thank you! I miss this lean mp3 player so much. I even have to make sure that in Ubuntu, I'm running my media players customized like Winamp - Audacious of course. I never thought this would be on the mobile platform. And Wi-Fi support? Awesome!
It seems to be missing the ability to play a stream from an URL. Even when I plug the url into the browser it does not show up as one of the apps capable of playing it. Hopefully they will add this feature.
Llama = iPhone
'nuff said
Protip: when you start Winamp make sure your headphones are plugged in. It still does that "WINAMP IT REALLY KICKS THE LAMAS ASS" really loud. I think I startled a few people sitting near me at my office. Now they think I kick lama's asses and I really don't. Well that one time, but the mother f'er spit on me.
Needs an equilizer and it needs a Genre option.
No lama's were hurt in this post.
i want milkdrop!!!
For putting music on the phone, I'm a Astro drag and drop sort of guy, but winamp could lure me away from all that. It looks like a great app.
Winamp has fallen into disuse since VLC hit the scene, (it just plays everything), but I could see it making a big come-back. So many people know it already.
They need to add some sync options, like to disable every song being in its own artist/album/ dir and maybe in a subdir called sdcard/music/
Does it have gapless playback like the desktop version of winamp? If so, I'm definitely going to get this.
No it doesn't. I sent the devs an email about that and an equalizer this morning, but haven't heard back yet.
How about a player that plays WMA files? Do I reaaly need to rerip all my music?
It only reads SD Card media, not phone storage. doubleTwist had this same issue before, too. Too bad. I split my music up so I can fit as much as possible on my phone (Incredible w/ 16gb sdcard).
Strange. I have all the music files stored on my D. Inc's internal memory (checked twice). Yet only 9 out of 170+ files are displayed. Looks like I may have to look at it again.
Strange, it reads my music just fine on my Vibrant, split between internal and external storage.
What's up with the massive widgets for most music players? The thing I like best about the stock Android player is the 1-row widget.
Otherwise this looks like my ideal player. Maybe I won't care so much about the widget since it has lock-screen controls.
If they add winamp remote access to this and the player can pull checklists from itunes then doubletwist is toast.
Ok Am I missing something? How do I get Winamp on my laptop to recognize my HTC Hero? Yes I have checked the wireless sync on the app is there anything else? Both phone and laptop are connected to the same WIFI.
Thanks
I believe you have to be running desktop Winamp 5.59 for the sync to work.
What widget are you using on your home screen for your Calendar?
It is Pure Calendar. (not Pure Grid Calendar if you are looking in the Market, although that is pretty good too). You can customise how it looks with skins and make it transparent like in the video. (It comes with a lot of different size widgets).
This is fantastic, Ive used winamp for years and years.
I see a lot of people saying "i used that back in highschool" what did you start using? Winamp has always covered pretty much all my needs, even when i used my ipod, it sync'd fine. only beef i have with it is the aol ties.
I noticed that you need to be using the beta 5.59 winamp for the wireless sync to work, I found it here:
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?p=2709791#post2709791
Ok switched to 5.59. Click on portables click on start discovery and nothing happens. Any other ideas?
Thanks
you wouldnt have portables, you would have devices to right click and click on start discovery.
i had to reboot my pc for it to work, that could have been because im at work though.
this is so awesome, im playing music from my phone over wireless on my laptop. I dont have to keep music on my laptop anymore when im at work and i can sync files to my phone wireless while at home...
now they just need to be able to sync play counts and rate the tracks and sync that back to the pc then i can die a very happy man. my nexus has fully replaced my ipod, gps, and laptop most of the time...
I've been using stock X player and its "OK" but not great.
Installed Winamp and I love it, just wish I could control it from the dock screen it woudl be perfect.
It has dock screen controls. You can toggle it on in the settings.
Winamp on my Droid is awesome. I did notice that it interferes with my USB connection - it always mounts my phone as "USB Mass Storage" even though I have it set to "Charge Only". Uninstalling Winamp caused the USB connection to work normally.
Go into the Winamp settings (Press Menu on the Home screen) and turn off the auto-mounting, its a default option.
Only issue I'm having as with most media players short of meridian is that it doesn't allow you to select where it pulls ur audio from so I end up with ringtones and voicemails in my songs playlist... am I overlooking an option to pull from my music folder only?? Thanks
So... is there really no way for the program to read files from internal storage? I only have 2 songs on my SD card, and it just seems like a huge oversight.
yea.. seems to be an oversight by everyone.. including HTC.. the DInc is the only one to have this "internal storage" that nothing but senseUI is able to access.. I say repartition it all to be for app space like the EVO, D2 and DX. I may be alone in this though :)
This made my day yesterday! :D
Thanks Phil!! I was curious as to who the artist Thao Nguyen on your play list was so I looked her up. Now I'm addicted to her awesome music. thanks!!!!
How do you get the music from iTunes to Winamp?
Nooooo, why no lyrics support?
Love Winamp, still use it since the 2.x days, glad to have it on my N1 now, but the UI is a little unfriendly to say the least. They could have made it much better. Anyway, I'll take it over the stock player until we see what Gingerbread brings along.
Just fyi for everyone. You need 5.59 for this to work. Version 5.58 is on the developer's site. Do a google search for winamp 5.59 beta. Once you have the correct version, syncing works like a champ.
Am I missing something? I downloaded version 5.59, enabled Wifi sync on my N1 but my phone does not appear on my Desktop Winamp under devices. I even did a Start Discovery on the Desktop Winamp but nothing!!!!
try a reboot, mine did the same
Thanks for the suggestion but I rebooted my home PC and my Nexus One but it's still not being detected under the DEVICE headline on my Desktop Winamp :(
Hmmmmm.....tried by rebooting phone and laptop. No luck. E-mailed the dev earlier today. Hope they get back to me soon.
Again when I click on devices then start discovery, nothing happens.
Yes running 5.59. 2.1 on phone non rooted Sprint Hero.
Hard for me to get excited. Why not just stream your tunes?
About a year ago i was hanging out with a few geeks and i mentioned i use winamp and shoutcast for most of my music. They told me i was "old school". I've been using winamp since the very early days because it was the fastest most light-weight player.
My question is, what the heck are people using these days?
I guess this will be replacing doubleTwist :D The album art displays for me, though my music on my phone is in AAC format
Why doesn't this or the stock Android app sort by Genre? That is one thing I really like about HTC's music player.
Glad to see there are a few others still using Winamp.
YAY! AND BOO! I got all excited over the announcement of Winamp for Android (Thanks a lot Phil!), but come to find out they STILL DON'T SUPPORT MAC OS X on the client side. So poo-poo for Winamp at the moment. Unless they venture into Mac territory, this Android app isn't going to be of much use to me; without a desktop client I cannot sync my music or playlists. And I was so hoping to be able to tell doubleTwist to take a flying leap since they have yet to enable podcast subscriptions. I guess I'll stick with TuneSync for now to synchronize my iTunes library with my EVO 4G. Womp Womp.
Wow, really digging the player. Better than MixZing (my previous fav), Tunewiki, or DoubleTwist. You can make playlists on the fly and get to artist/album views very quickly. Lockscreen player is nice. I wish the widget were a 1x4 though.
Is there a way to define where it dumps the music to on ur sd card during wireless sync. I ended up with 500000000 separate artist folders...
To all those who downloaded 5.59 beta on your desktop(needed for the Wi-Fi sync)and had issues, make sure that you allow the program through your firewall as it accesses your private/home network. Also, on my phone I received a pop-up asking if I wanted to connect to my laptop when it was discovering it. Keep an eye out for that as well. FYI, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate on my laptop so it may be different for you depending on your OS. Liking the Beta so far. It needs some things but that's why it's in Beta, so we can make suggestions and report those bugs.
This looks so great. Once it can do lyrics syncing and last.fm scrobbling like TuneWiki, it'll definitely be my default player of choice.
last.fm scrobbling works fine for me. Did you turn it on in settings?
Hey Phil, I think I just noticed that the wireless sync does NOT carry over album art, that is why yours doesn't show. The folks at winamp should probably add something to drag over the jpgs, etc. with the music also can't be that hard.
All my doubletwist music still showed album art though.