Although no official announcement is currently available, AOL-owned TechCrunch reports that Winamp is still alive and kicking despite the warning residing on the website. The latest version of the media player is 5.666, which AOL suggested users needed to download before the file was supposedly pulled on December 20, 2013. As of this writing, users can still download the client from the main Winamp site.
"Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years," reads the warning.
Previous reports indicated that the shutdown was put on hold due to negotiations with an unnamed buyer. Sources would not cough up the mystery party's identity, but merely expressed their confidence in the deal being finalized soon.
Previous talk pegged Microsoft as the lucky buyer, speculating that SHOUTcast could be integrated into the Xbox Music platform. However, the latest rumor surrounding Winamp and SHOUTcast is that Brussels, Belgium-based Radionomy, an international aggregator of online radio stations, may be the proud new owner. The news arrives by way of several people on the Winamp forums who saw that Winamp's nameservers were transferred to Radionomy.
Sources told TechCrunch that the deal is for both AOL properties, and will likely be signed, sealed and delivered by Friday, if not already. Radionomy is similar to Pandora in that users can create their own stations. The company claims that it has more than 13 million unique listeners, more than 6,000 stations, and pumps out more than 42 million hours of streaming music each month.
"The Radionomy platform encourages fans to build stations drawing from a licensed library of more than 80,000 songs and content," reads the company's promo sheet. "Radionomy takes care of online broadcasting, live functions, author rights, scheduling, audience reporting and metrics and storage for programmers who want to add their own songs and other content or podcasts. And, Radionomy pumps out the music in high quality 128 kbs sound."
As of this writing, AOL and Radionomy have not provided a statement regarding the latest rumor. Perhaps we shall have one on Friday before CES 2014 kicks into high gear.
