While working under AOL, Frankel (along with fellow computer programmer and Nullsoft co-founder Tom Pepper) released Gnutella, an open-source peer-to-peer file-sharing network that competed with Napster in both popularity and controversy, due to a very miffed AOL.Īccording to an archived Rolling Stone interview from 2004 with Frankel aptly entitled "The World's Most Dangerous Geek":ĪOL ordered him to take the program down immediately, and the company put out a statement calling Gnutella an 'unauthorized freelance project.' But Gnutella, unlike Napster, couldn't be stopped. In 1999, AOL bought Nullsoft and everything changed. It allowed users to not only easily play music on their computers complete with playlists, an equalizer, and Pink Floyd light-show-worthy visualizations, it also inspired fans to make their own player skins to share with others. The ultimate video game area sat in the middle of the room.įifteen million people downloaded Winamp in a little over a year after its release. Staff wore inflatable Sumo wresting outfits for the hell of it. The motto rang true, considering it kicked the asses of any other media play on the market. Nullsoft's snarky attitude was obvious from the start with its mascot - a llama named Mike who came with his own tagline: "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass!" (a line inspired by the schizophrenic singer-songwriter Wesley Willis).
He went on to start his company Nullsoft (a parody of Microsoft's name) a year later. In 1996, Winamp - short for "Windows Amplifier" - was created and released by computer programmer Justin Frankel. Nullsoft's story started way before I arrived.
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Many of us were young and full of "piss off" energy. America Online had just bought the company, and Nullsoft employees weren't thrilled with the prospect of being told what to do by a large company with a lot of rules. When I first started there in 2001, I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Here are some of my memories of working at Nullsoft, the company that created it. This week, the world said goodbye to the legendary media player with plenty of nostalgia, but for me, Winamp's death means the end of a very personal era.
If you downloaded a song in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you most likely did it with Winamp.
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