It's unclear exactly how the Winamp3 detour will affect the long-range prospects of the Winamp player and AOL's ability to use Nullsoft technology to compete in digital media, but it is unlikely to help. Winamp3's hold-up may have allowed its competitors to make greater inroads into the explosive growth of digital music. Microsoft and RealNetworks have tied their own media players more closely into their core assets, the Windows operating system and the RealOne subscription service. The companies also have beefed up their players to offer many features once popularised by Winamp such as personalised interface skins, music libraries and CD playback. The mainstream appeal of Microsoft's and RealNetworks' players have sidelined Winamp into a more enthusiast crowd. "It was a one-trick pony, and the trick it did was really good," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "The problem was there were many horses that could do that trick." That's not to say Winamp is devoid of its own distribution giant. Parent company AOL, which remains the largest Internet service in the world, has used Nullsoft to code its proprietary digital-media player since 2001. This summer, AOL plans to release the next version of its online service, currently dubbed AOL 9.0, which will include a new media player, code-named Llama, created by the Nullsoft team. Like previous versions, Llama will include support for playback files encoded in Microsoft and RealNetworks, with the new addition of Apple's QuickTime technology formats. Unlike previous incarnations, AOL will push for companies to use Nullsoft audio and video formats, called NSA and NSV, respectively. Content providers that sign exclusive deals to stream their media on AOL will be required to use Nullsoft's formats. Nullsoft developers also were the brains behind Ultravox, which is server software that streams multimedia. Ultravox has been incorporated into Radio@AOL's dial-up and broadband products and is central to AOL's move away from RealNetworks' streaming format. Coding for the masses
Although the Winamp3 movement has been put on the back burner, it's by no means dead. Elements of Winamp3 and Wasabi will be combined with the faster, slimmer Winamp 2 for the next version of Winamp, called Winamp 5 (versions 2 plus 3), due out in late 2003. Wasabi code also is still being toyed with inside the halls of Nullsoft's San Francisco loft and will be found inside certain applications in Winamp 5, such as its skinning engine and its media library. Meanwhile, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the team of young developers that started Nullsoft. The central figure in this drama is Frankel, the original developer of Winamp. In recent weeks, Frankel has caused a stir by publicly pondering a departure from AOL after the Internet giant pulled his latest software creation. Called Waste, the service was typical Frankel: simple, small and potentially controversial. Waste -- a reference to the secret postal network in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49-- lets people set up private networks of 50 people or less in which participants can swap computer files, instant-message one another, and communicate in real time. Shortly after AOL pulled Waste from Nullsoft's site, Frankel stirred up chatter by posting a notice on his Web site about his unhappiness and then threatened to leave. Frankel remains an AOL employee, but his future at the company is uncertain. Wasabi developers have accepted this turn of events, though some reflect fondly on what Wasabi tried to accomplish. Regis Nabor downloaded Wasabi in April 2001 while still a student in Rennes, France, and soon began developing music applications for the Winamp3 community. He created a CD burner that lets people copy MP3s onto a disc. Then he used Wasabi to refine a new client developed by Nullsoft veterans called Muse.net, which lets people access their song collections remotely. Now a part of the Muse.net team in Los Angeles, Nabor agrees that many people turned away from Winamp3 due to its slow load times and bloat. However, he still believes that the Wasabi code was special and that AOL may have pulled the plug on it too soon. "By the time they stopped Winamp3, Wasabi was optimised and was really faster," Nabor said in an interview. "I think people decided to stop and didn't give enough time to the team."
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