 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Defunct | 2014 |
| Successor | Radionomy |
| Headquarters | Sedona, Arizona |
Key people | Justin Frankel Tom Pepper |
| Products | Winamp, SHOUTcast, and others |
| Owner | Radionomy Group |
Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by programmer Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server.
In 1997, Justin Frankel, a programmer from Sedona, Arizona, founded Nullsoft, Inc in his home town. The company's name is a parody of Microsoft. [1] Mike the Llama is the company's mascot. [lower-alpha 1] The company launched the media player Winamp in 1997, developed by Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev. It was the second real-time MP3 player for Windows, following WinPlay3. [2]
Nullsoft, along with Spinner.com, were sold to America Online (AOL) on June 1, 1999, for around $400 million and thereafter existed as a subsidiary, subsequently becoming a division of AOL Music. The headquarters were moved to San Francisco, California. [3] [4]
According to Bonnie Burton, then editor of the website Winamp.com, 2001 was a period of heightened tension between the Nullsoft staff and upper management, because of Frankel's uncompromising views about file-sharing. He had developed Gnutella in 2000 and released it using company infrastructure. [5] [6] Ars Technica also noted that AOL failed to effectively monetize or find a larger audience for Winamp. [7] Nullsoft's San Francisco offices were closed in December 2003, with a near-concurrent departure of Frankel and the original Winamp development team. [1] [3] In 2013, some AOL Music sites were shut down and others sold to Townsquare Media. [8] [9] [10]
In November 2013, an unofficial report surfaced that Microsoft was in talks with AOL to acquire Nullsoft. [11] On January 14, 2014, it was officially announced that Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy had bought Winamp and Shoutcast, formerly owned by Nullsoft. No financial details were publicly announced. [12] [13]
Winamp is a media player released by Nullsoft in April 1997. By 1999, it was downloaded by 15 million people. [1] The company released several new versions of the Winamp player and grew its monthly unique subscriber base to 60 million users by late 2004. [3] Winamp was discontinued by Nullsoft around 2013. [14] New versions of Winamp, which started releasing in 2023, are by a different developer named Llama Group. [15]
SHOUTcast (currently Shoutcast) is an MP3 streaming media server.
In later years, their open source installer system, the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) became an alternative to commercial products like InstallShield. [16]
Nullsoft's developments after acquisition included the Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV) format, which was intended to stream media that used any audio or video codec. In 2002, the press reported a technology called Ultravox being developed by Nullsoft. [17] The company also created the peer-to-peer networks Gnutella and WASTE. [1] Although AOL tried to limit the distribution of Gnutella and WASTE, the Ultravox technology was reportedly used for some AOL radio services in 2003. [18] A service called Nullsoft Television was announced in 2003 using NSV. [19]
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network protocol. Founded in 2000, it was the first decentralized peer-to-peer network of its kind, leading to other, later networks adopting the model.
Napster was an American peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared on the service was typically encoded in the MP3 format. As the software became popular, the company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement. Napster ceased operations in 2001 after losing multiple lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.
X Multimedia System (XMMS) is an audio player for Unix-like systems released under a free software license.
Justin Frankel is an American computer programmer best known for his work on the Winamp media player application and for inventing the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. Frankel is also the founder of Cockos Incorporated, which creates music production and development software such as the REAPER digital audio workstation, the NINJAM collaborative music tool and the Jesusonic expandable effects processor.
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014, now known as the Llama Group. Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community.
Shoutcast is a service for streaming media over the internet to media players, using its own cross-platform proprietary software. It allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding format. The most common use of Shoutcast is for creating or listening to Internet audio broadcasts; however, there are also video streams. The software is available to use for free or as a paid cloud service with additional professional features.
Advanced Visualization Studio (AVS), is a music visualization plugin for Winamp. It was designed by Winamp creator, Justin Frankel and was first shipped in version 2.0a4 with Winamp 2.61. AVS has a customizable design which allows users to create their own visualization effects, or "presets". AVS was made open source software in May 2005, released under a BSD-style license. AVS is currently at version 2.83 and is included with Winamp, though the distributed version has later been reverted due to compatibility issues. Winamp currently ships with version 2.82 for Windows Vista and 2.81d for older Windows versions.
Ultravox or Ultravox Media On Demand Server (UltraMODS) is a streaming video project by AOL.. The goal of the project is to create a service for routers akin to SHOUTcast, aiming to help the data be handled better, to allow for more efficient handling of more users, and to enable much faster channel changing.
Icecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. It also refers specifically to the server program which is part of the project. Icecast was created in December 1998/January 1999 by Jack Moffitt and Barath Raghavan to provide an open-source audio streaming server that anyone could modify, use, and tinker with. Version 2, a ground-up rewrite aimed at multi-format support and scalability, was started in 2001 and released in January 2004.
M3U is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a stream on the Internet. The created file provides easy access to that stream and is often used in downloads from a website, for emailing, and for listening to Internet radio.
PLS is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. It is typically used by media players for streaming media over the Internet, but may also be used for playing local media.
Altacast is a free and open-source audio encoder that can be used to create Internet streams of varying types. Many independent and commercial broadcasters use Altacast to create Internet radio stations, such as those listed on the Icecast, Loudcaster and Shoutcast station directories.
Tom Pepper is a computer programmer best known for his collaboration with Justin Frankel on the Gnutella peer-to-peer system. He and Frankel co-founded Nullsoft, whose most popular program is Winamp, which was sold to AOL in May 1999. He subsequently worked for AOL developing SHOUTcast, an Internet streaming audio service, with Frankel and Stephen "Tag" Loomis. After leaving AOL in 2004. he worked at RAZZ, Inc. He continues to collaborate with Frankel on independent projects like Ninjam.
K-Multimedia Player is an Adware-supported media player for Windows, android and iOS that can play most current audio and video formats, including VCD, DVD, AVI, MP4, MPG, DAT, OGM, VOB, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, AAC, WMA 7/8, WMV, RealMedia, FLV, and QuickTime.
AOL Radio powered by Slacker was an online radio service available in the United States only. It had over 200 free internet radio stations.
Gracenote, Inc. is a company and service that provides music, video, and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies worldwide. Formerly CDDB, Gracenote maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. From 2008 to 2014, it was owned by Sony, later sold to Tribune Media, and has been owned since 2017 by Nielsen Holdings. In 2019, Nielsen Holdings announced plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies, Nielsen Global Connect and Nielsen Global Media. In October 2022, Nielsen Holdings, including the Gracenote subsidiary was acquired by a private equity consortium.
MacAmp is an early GUI-based MP3 audio player, first released on April 13, 1997, for the Macintosh by Dmitry Boldyrev of Nullsoft. Its MP3 decoding capability was based on the PlayMedia Systems AMP MPEG-2, Layers 1, 2 and 3 decoder.
Spinner was an online music and entertainment service. An AOL Music property, it was acquired by AOL on June 1, 1999, along with Nullsoft for $400 million. Based in San Francisco, California, the website was the first Internet music service and was the largest by 2001, while offering promotional features from high-profile recording artists. In 2002, AOL combined Spinner with the former's Netscape portal to form Netscape Radio. Spinner broadcast over 100 radio stations, including Radio CMJ.
Cockos, Inc is an American digital audio technology company founded in 2004, most notable for their digital audio workstation software REAPER.
Radionomy was an online platform that provided tools for operating online radio stations. It was part of Radionomy Group, a company which later acquired the online streaming platform SHOUTcast from Nullsoft, and eventually consolidated Radionomy into its SHOUTcast service.