Remember the days of Winamp, that funky, light (~v2 anyway) little MP3 player? It was the ultimate accessory on every geeks tools belt, along with ICQ, mIRC, Netscape and possibly Eudora (though I never cared for it). I remember it, very fondly, it was in my opinion responsible for bringing MP3 music to the masses, or at least to those geeky enough to have gone out looking for it. It did, what every good music player should, and what many of todays media players faily miserably at (especially a certain Media Player that’s at ver 11). Simplicity is what it did well, and at the time it worked fantastically.
Winamp v2 – Basic, like a crappy car stereo
Sonique media player was a funky upstart that was in development about the same time, which had a completely different approach to to the MP3 and media playing application. It went outside the box, of what a normal application looked like with funky designs and skins that didn’t fit into the shape of a normal window, and if I remember correctly came standard with a host of plugins, visualisation and other addons.
Sonqiue’s interesting style
Now, to the point of my post!
I was talking to one of the guys at the office the other day, and it turns out he was one of the lead developers on the Sonique application and some of the plugins that came with it to produce oh so clear crystal sound. He spoke of the hype surrounding the application, and the chance at millions when bought out by Lycos (I think??!), and subsequent downfall as the other competitors tried different/more successful things.
This proves basically nothing except that once again, the world is a tiny place, but oh well, I still think Winamp was the better player!
Off topic, but I still happen to have the original set of MP3′s I first managed to download all those years ago (digitally copied many times of course), but the tracks have managed to stay (embarrisingly) in the collection all these years and have kept their original script kiddie style filenames. These include such greats as:
- John Denver’s, Thank God, I’m a country boy (aptly name Denv-ThankGod.mp3)
- various Smashing Pumpkins songs
- Paul Simon, You can call me Al
- Pink Floyd
- Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin
and many more! Random!
