Second coming?
15 years after its founding, all of Winamp's original employees are long gone (most of them have moved on to other jobs in Silicon Valley, mostly in the tech and music sectors), and the product has now been around longer without Frankel than with him. Its user base continues to stagnate as competitors such as Rdio, Spotify and Pandora, not to mention iTunes, which sold its 15 billionth song– continue to thrive.
But Geno YohamWinamp's CEO since October 2008, claims that Winamp will continue to succeed as a media player, especially in emerging markets where Apple has also not penetrated.
“iTunes is number one and we are number two,” he said. “The Winamp brand is a media player that's on your side and has tremendous value.”
Winamp reports that it currently has about 30 million users worldwide (according to comScore web traffic analysis), with less than one million in the United States. The company is also starting to target specific platforms (read: Android) rather than specific markets. Winamp reports that since the launch of Winamp for Android in October 2010, it has been installed more than 19 million times. Can Winamp rise again?
“We are thinking about [buying Winamp] again,” said Josh Felser, a former Spinner executive and current venture capitalist who said he and other investors also tried to buy Winamp from AOL in 2003. He is still in love with the idea of Winamp and the community it spawned and believes that someone can still benefit from all this potential.
“Winamp started something social in music,” he said, oblivious to the fact that music shared it. Spotify is now doing it on Facebook. “It's just looking at what people listen to. It's not right.”
“[Winamp] we had a very clear, modern and tech-savvy community, and it is a valuable community for many people. This would be very important to understand. What set of features can we add to it to make it more relevant again? I don't have one. I'll have to take this seriously.”
However, he admitted that no significant steps had been taken in terms of negotiations with AOL about a possible acquisition.
“Although the idea of starting from this base [of an existing community and a history] it’s exciting,” he said with a grin. “I didn’t think about it for more than five minutes.”
