Nullsoft to offer a premium 'Winamp Pro' version of Winamp 5

December 8, 2003

Winamp use to be a shareware product back in its early days. Despite having no functionality restrictions or a limited trial period, users were encouraged to register it after 15 days or so if they find it useful. After Nullsoft receiving ample funds from enough users registering their software, Nullsoft decided to make Winamp 2 freeware and have remained so even during their unsuccessful Winamp version 3.

Now with the beta and release-candidate versions of version 5, Winamp 5 will come in two flavours. Winamp 5 offers backwards compatibility along with the existing features of Winamp 2 and 3 while a few extra features will only be available in their 'Winamp Pro' premium version. Winamp 5's new ripping and burning features function at a much reduced speed and MP3 burning is disabled in their standard version including their current beta and release-candidate versions. The Winamp Pro features are currently not available for purchase. Users who registered Winamp back in the Winamp shareware days will have to reregister to obtain the premium features of Winamp 5.

Winamp Pro

Why Pro?
In forthcoming versions of Winamp, new features are going to be optionally included which need to be paid for on a per copy basis. As Winamp gets a lot of downloads, it is not viable for Nullsoft to pay for this themselves.

What will I gain from getting Winamp Pro?
Currently you will be able to:

Encode MP3
Rip CDs at full speed
Burn CDs at full speed
Also, in the future other
Pro features will be added, for which your Winamp Pro key will work.
(Things like DVD Playback, hopefully )

What will I lose from sticking with regular Winamp?
Nothing!
Indeed, you will gain the ability to Rip and Burn CDs at slow speeds, as well as all the other new features in Winamp 5.

I already have a good free CD Ripper/Burner, do I have to have CD Ripping/Burning in Winamp?
No. In the installer, under Audio File Support you can uncheck what you don't want.

Why do I have to pay for MP3 encoding when it uses LAME which is free and open source?
Even though LAME is open source, Nullsoft has to pay per copy to Thompson for a licence to encode MP3. Thompson only offer MP3 encoding licences on a per-copy basis, so unfortunatly it has to be only included in the Pro version.

I paid for the shareware version of Winamp a while back before it went free, why do I have to pay again?
Because this is Winamp Pro. If you paid for the Winamp shareware you can still use Winamp, there is no pressure to upgrade.

Remember, it costs Nullsoft for every single Winamp Pro licence. If Nullsoft could do Winamp Pro for free, they would.

Winamp 2.92 and Winamp 2.95 had free, full speed CD Ripping, what gives?
They were leaked versions never intended for public consumption. This is the reason that they were illegal leaks.

I give in, I need winamp pro in my life, where can a buy it and how much will it cost?
You can't buy it just yet, wait until the new website comes into force. As far as costs go, we just don't know, but it won't be too much, as it is just to cover the licencing costs of the new technology.

I found/made a crack/keygen for winamp pro, what do I do?
Send mail to /dev/null, they might care more than we do. Of course, if you post links to anything like that on the forums, your post will be edited, and will be banned. If you made the crack/keygen yourself, then you need to come to terms with your total social inadequacy and move away from your computer.

See the full source forum thread here.

I can understand requiring registration for the MP3 encoding functionally due to MP3 licensing issues, but burning and ripping are not royalty fee driven from what I'm aware of. Then again, if one simply uses Winamp as a player rather than for ripping and burning CDs, Winamp 5's standard edition should be just as functional as Winamp 2 & 3 combined along with any other new featuers Winamp 5 has to offer. The one problem now is that Nullsoft may be tempted to restrict certain new features in later releases to its premium version only.

Discuss about Winamp and audio software on our Audio Forum.

Source: Winamp Forum