The news dropped on Wednesday: After 16 years, the pioneering desktop MP3 player Winamp will be put out to pasture on Dec. 20. In a world dominated by iTunes, "the first reaction to Winamp's closure might be surprise that it still exists in the first place," says Tom Gara at The Wall Street Journal. But it does, in the shadows, as it has since AOL acquired it in 1999 with its $80 million purchase of Nullsoft. The AOL subsidiary has even continued tending to its venerable MP3 player, releasing updates and versions for Mac OSX and Android.



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