14 DAY TRIAL // Winamp now has a new owner, so the media player will live on, together with the adjacent services, including music streaming tech Shoutcast.
But what’s more important is that, Radionomy, a streaming music company and the new owner of Winamp, is planning to expand the capabilities of the app and make it the foundation of devices outside your home.
Radionomy CEO Alexandre Saboundjian said in the official takeover announcement that Winamp and Shoutcast will help the new owner not only reach new customers in the United States, but also to expand to new platforms, including car audio systems.
Winamp is, at this point, available on Windows, Mac OS X, and Android, where it already received more than 10 million downloads, according to the Google Play listing. Bringing Winamp in cars, obviously with the help of mobile platforms, would obviously boost its consumer appeal, even though it’s pretty clear that Radionomy still has a long way to go before reaching this goal.
And still, features like synchronization support and Internet radio access would clearly come in handy for many drivers out there, especially because Winamp is now estimated to provide access to no less than 60,000 Internet radio stations worldwide.
“Its role is clear in the future evolution of online media—we plan to make the player ubiquitous, developing new functionalities dedicated to desktop, mobile, car systems, connected devices and all other platforms,” Saboundjian explained in the press release launched yesterday.
The terms of the takeover deal are yet to be disclosed, but TechCrunch is reporting, via unnamed sources, that AOL agreed to sell both Winamp and Shoutcast for a price ranging in between $5 million (€3.6 million) and $10 million (€7.3 million), while also taking over a 12 percent stake in Radionomy streaming music company.