Winamp is falling into crypto hole. Get WACUP instead.

Or

The steep decline of the best media player on PC.

Which is what I'd preffer to call this post, but it would be way too vague to catch the much needed attention.

TL;DR:

It's actually worse than just crypto - both functionality and stability of Winamp is getting worse. WACUP on the other hand is actually developed in the spirit of old Winamp, by past Winamp dev and with ACTUAL new fetures.

Quick rundown of what's relevant of the story:

Winamp, as many of you are aware was an amazing, very powerful and flexible media player with a ton of functionality. Anything from the window look and layout to mp3 player integraion, and more. It used to be that way for literal decades - untill version 5.666. The project was supposed to close in 2013, with 5.666 as the final release. That did not happen, as it was acquired in 2014 by Radionomy, but we would have to wait for 5.8 till 2018. It was a "leak". In reality you could download it from official site, and it got a second build, all of which happening simultaneously with them stating that Winamp 5 is not an on-going project, because Winamp 6. Most of what they did in 5.8 was move from VS2008 to one of the newer versions, allegedly improving stability and compatibility with Windows 8-11, which to my knowledge 5.666 had no issues with. I was told by people who actually work with modern skin engine and plugins (and who were the primary source of my infor and are also proof reading this post) that it's far less stable than 5.666 - a result of development team restructuring. In reality 5.8 was likely mostly a means for them to remove every bit of licensed content possible(such as fraunhofer codec, CD ripping engine, autotagging, etc). This remains the case now, in 5.9 which actually released, and 5.9.1 which in early December last year finally added NFT support.
All this still sounds relatively fine though, right? Stability may be down but no damage overall is being done, correct?
The short answer is: No.
The long answer is: NFTs and the ever elussive Winamp 6 have taken all the attention from everything else. Prior devs refuse to let their once standard plugins be used, as they see new releases as butchering of their work and what Winamp once stood for, the features that are still there have increasingly hard time running, and it appears that Winamp 6 will either be a very comercial spotify clone, now ith blockchain or something much more boring and devoid of soul. People currently responsible for the brand seem entirely fine with it. But the biggest detriment to Winamp right now is the newfound competition. That being... Itself. Kinda...
WACUP stands (unofficially, of course) for Winamp Community Update Project - it started as a plugin pack to 5.666 and it's handled by one of the aforementioned prior devs, one who knows what they're doing with the project, and you can tell the moment you first open it, being greeted with modern engine re-imagining of classic skin, with smoother and more flexible window sizing, editable color values and such, at least if your system screen settings cooperate. Winamp code base was always a bit of a mess and to the best of our knowledge documentation doesn't exist. Half of what's going on with the project is figuring out how to make it more stable and not rely on Winamp core - as WACUP's own is being developed, but for now most all shortcommings can be mitigated in preferences menu. All this isn't to say the project is stuck in development hell. It does have actual new functionality. Nothing crazy, Winamp as it was at 5.666 didn't really need much, but it is there, and more relevant to typicall users. Big clock - to enlarge/extend the player display; Waveform seeker for when you need a larger progressbar, or to actually see the waveform; Lyrics - All things with real aplications, all in line with what made Winamp great. I sincirely recomend you get wacup either as a replacement for Winamp, or a brand new player. Failing that for whatever reason - just stick to Winamp 5.666 and prior, as it was untouched with nonsense.