Keep in mind Winamp? The enduring music participant for desktop computer systems revolutionized music consumption within the Nineties, however pale from view as music listeners switched to smartphones and streaming.

Now the app is again with a brand new product for the fashionable period. Its Belgium-based proprietor, Llama Group, is launching a brand new model that might be obtainable for Android and Apple units, which it payments as an all-purpose app for music connoisseurs.

(Although to listen to Llama Group inform it, Winamp by no means went away; the corporate says the prevailing desktop app has 83 million customers worldwide.)

The brand new cell Winamp will be capable to stream podcasts and on-line radio stations, and later this yr, will probably be in a position to combine music streaming subscriptions like Spotify, permitting subscribers to entry their playlists by way of Winamp. And just like the outdated Winamp, it would additionally play music recordsdata saved domestically on a tool.

However Llama Group’s ambitions are bigger than that; they need the participant to “unlock the connection between artists and followers, whereas empowering creators to turn into their very own retailers.”

To that finish, the app features a function referred to as the Fanzone, the place creators can arrange tiered subscription plans by way of which their followers can entry unique content material and purchase artist merchandise.

“Creators discover it more and more exhausting to realize worth from streaming providers, making it more durable for them to maintain their artwork and develop their careers,” Llama Group CEO Alexandre Saboundjian stated in a press release.

“On this setting, artists need to take their future into their very own fingers – they should complement the earnings by changing into their very own retailers. … With the brand new Winamp participant, our purpose is to empower creators to make more cash, at a time after they actually need it.”

The Fanzone might be obtainable to impartial artists, artists signed to labels and even to labels themselves, Llama Group stated in an electronic mail to MBW.

“We’re in superior discussions with impartial labels that want to open a brand new kind of market to get even nearer to their followers – the followers of the artists and the music they produce – and to supply them unique content material and distinctive experiences,” the corporate stated by way of a spokesperson.

“The Fanzone is the service, the instruments and the chance for artists and labels to turn into higher retailers of their content material.”

Llama Group is obvious that it’s not aiming to compete with music streaming providers.

“Winamp doesn’t have the ambition to turn into a DSP, and certainly the concept is to be complementary to the prevailing streaming music ecosystem,” the corporate stated.

Possibly probably the most shocking factor about Winamp’s leap into the world of smartphones and streaming is how lengthy it took to occur. In spite of everything, it’s been 16 years since Apple launched the iPhone and adjusted the best way the world consumes media.

However for Winamp, the highway to the cell period was a rocky one. In 2013, the app narrowly averted being shut down by its proprietor AOL, earlier than being rescued by Belgian radio aggregator Radionomy. After a merger and a rebrand, that firm is now Llama Group.

(The corporate’s identify is a reference to the truth that Winamp makes use of a llama as its mascot. The unique Winamp famously got here with a default audio file referred to as “Winamp, it actually whips the llama’s ass.”)

“Winamp doesn’t have the ambition to turn into a DSP, and certainly the concept is to be complementary to the prevailing streaming music ecosystem.”

Llama Group

Saboundjian introduced as way back as 2018 that the app can be relaunched for smartphones and would function the flexibility to combine streaming providers.

The corporate is lastly able to put a date to that promise: Streaming integration will start within the fourth quarter of 2023.

Llama Group’s aim is to develop the Winamp person base to 250 million folks, and to get a million artists to arrange store on the Fanzone.

“A brand new era of superfans are searching for new methods to spend cash on, and interact with, their favourite artists. Winamp’s Fanzone provides them a chance to do exactly that,” Saboundjian stated.Music Enterprise Worldwide