> Almost like the project was sold to some incompetent people

Well AOL bought it ... Milking something as long as possible instead of innovating is kind of their thing.

Winamp went downhill with Winamp 3 which was well before AOL bought it. Winamp 3 was a heavy mess. It sounds crazy today, but my slow Windows computer at the time could barely run Winamp 3 which led me to downloading iTunes!

iTunes on Windows used to be really great if you just wanted music. It used to be that iTunes was considered a Trojan horse to show Windows users how good Mac software was.

Amazing how times change.

Yep, I remember being very excited about WinAmp 3 and then just getting this massive letdown feeling immediately after trying it. Everyone I know went back to 2.

> Winamp could have been Spotify but went in a completely different directions

Yes I remember that the first time I used streaming music it was shoutcast.

It was really fantastic with hundreds of different music channels and podcasts. One radio station I was particularly fond off was called Atlantic sound factory. They had a goldmine on their hands and it's a shame they let it all go to waste.

And video streaming too. It was uncommon but they had the nsv (nullsoft video) format.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullsoft_Streaming_Video

Yep, "podcast" still feels like an Apple-branded version of shoutcasts to me, 15 years later.

IceCast still exists.

I've been a di.fm subscriber for a looooooong time now. :)

> Winamp could have been Spotify but went in a completely different directions

I'm not so sure how successful that really would have been. There is a significant gap between Winamp falling out of favor and the rise of Spotify. The obvious winner in that gap wasn't any streaming service, it was Apple. The gap is basically defined as the period between when the iPod became ubiquitous and when the iPhone became ubiquitous. Granted, there is a few year period between when the iPhone was released and when streaming took over.

Spotify-like streaming services like Rhapsody existed during that gap but they weren't compatible with the iPod and even players they were compatible required a pretty cumbersome process in order to sync and listen offline. I think Rhapsody enjoyed a relatively brief period when smartphones became available and they could stream from there but it was a no-brainer to switch to Spotify once they launched in the U.S.

I think Netflix was geared for streaming from the start, and renting DVDs by mail was only their strategy to get off the ground.

Not sure about that, Netflix began in 1997 but didn’t start streaming for 10 full years until 2007. Even then it was after Amazon had launched their streaming service. None of that makes them sound like visionaries in the streaming evolution they just executed well when it did happen, as opposed to Blockbuster’s competing service which failed to execute.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Netflix

I really miss Grooveshark's UX, it felt so good at the time.

What I liked the most was the "reverse-playlist search". For instance, if you find a song you like, you can see all the public playlists containing it. I much prefer that to the "let me recommend you songs" approach.

It feels like Spotify keeps recommending the same few somgs to me unless I go for the weekly 'Discovery' playlist.