There was a time when folks had a favourite media player. For the most part, that media player was Winamp thanks to its ability to play almost any media file.

In an age of streaming, however, there isn’t really a need for a media player and if you do need one, chances are high that you’re using VLC Media Player.

But now, for those itching for a nostalgia trip, Winamp is back after a four year hiatus.

As spotted by Pitchfork, Winamp is back and its developers have made several updates to the application. These include improved compatibility with Windows 11, improved playback of webstreams and support for a variety of compressed media.

“This is the culmination of 4 years’ work since the 5.8 release. Two dev teams, and a pandemic-induced hiatus period inbetween,” the developers wrote.

“To the end-user, it might not seem like there’s a whole heap of changes, but the largest and hardest part was actually migrating the entire project from VS2008 to VS2019 and getting it all to build successfully. The groundwork has now been laid, and now we can concentrate more on features. Whether fixing/replacing old ones or adding new,” the team added.

You can read the changelog and download the latest version of Winamp here. We should point out that your connection to the Winamp forum isn’t encrypted so proceed with caution.

Aside from nostalgia though, we don’t really see the point in downloading Winamp. As mentioned, the world has moved on from downloading One Step Closer (REMIX) – Linkin Park, MARILYN MANSON, Korn, Eminem, Spice Girls type tracks from Limewire to streaming. While we’re sure some folks still listen to downloaded music, we can’t see why they’d use Winamp over VLC.

Maybe Winamp can lure users back with its custom skins and new features such as sections for podcasts, but we’re not hopeful.

As an aside, the headline is a reference to the audio that plays when you first launch Winamp. Our thoughts are with the llama population during this difficult time.