Today, we’re diving into the pixel powered era of the late 90s to reminisce about a gem from the golden age of MP3s: WinAmp.
WinAmp, launched in 1997 by Nullsoft, quickly became a sensation among music lovers and digital pioneers alike. It wasn’t just a media player; it was the media player. What set WinAmp apart was its slick interface, minimalistic yet packed with features. It played your MP3s with a quality and ease that felt cool. The equalizer animations were simply mesmerizing to me at that time.
The real magic of WinAmp lay in its customization ability. Unlike most of today’s software, WinAmp invited users to “hack” their way into its UI design and make it their own. Remember all of those weird skins? This level of customization offered a unique sense of ownership and creativity among its users.
For me, creating that crusty old WinAmp skin above was a gateway that opened up my interesest in designing and coding themes/skins for things.
Every pixel you see on the original WinAmp skin was available to override with a combination of custom bitmaps and some simple code changes.
If you really want to nerd out and take a retro design deep dive into the details, The Internet Archive has preserved the documentation for creating classic skins from WinAmp.
The Winamp Skin Museum
Thankfully, all of the WinAmp skins have been archived and are documented on this super clever site called The Winamp Skin Museum. Here, you can view all of those early internet skin masterpieces emulated as they were in their native pc environment.
winampify.io
Another way to get that nostalgia, is winamplify.io. This throwback WinAmp emulator for Spotify is cool. You can log in and use the web-based interface to access all of your Spotify music.
I really appreciate the thought put into this web app’s retro desktop inspired UI. I love how you have to double click on the desktop icons for the links/folders. Shout out to the creators! The source code is all available on GitHub.
WinAmp Original Skin Clone
That’s right, retro UI ported to Figma. This asset is available for the Figma community. This stellar work from Matthew Wheeler is available here!
And the beat goes on.