Winamp is gearing up for a comeback again, this time with Deezer’s help

Everyone who used a Windows computer in the late 90s and early 2000s knows about Winamp. It is a music player that offered a lot of customization for listening to locally stored audio. However, over the years, it lost its popularity and has been struggling to make a comeback. This time, the team behind it has plans to bring it up to speed with modern-day media players and streaming platforms.

For its revamp, Winamp has partnered with Deezer to bring a vast music library to users, but of course, with a subscription service. The music player will become a platform for playing locally stored music, as well as streaming Deezer’s library of music based on Deezer’s white-label music streaming technology. The Winamp Player will be a one-stop shop for music streaming, local music libraries, internet radio, podcasts, and personal cloud-based collections.

It will still allow users to heavily customize the interface and also bring social features as many modern streaming apps do.

Details about how Winamp will do music streaming differently will be revealed closer to launch in H1 2027, but the company says it will “deliver a fundamentally different experience from today’s traditional digital streaming platforms, reimagining both the listening experience and the subscription model.”

For reference, this will be yet another attempt for Winamp to make a comeback. In 2023, the player was redesigned into an artist-focused platform, but it failed to meet its goals. Then, in 2024, the source code was released online, but its closed licensing led to another failure. With Deezer’s help, Winamp hopes this 2027 comeback will be more successful.