Winamp 5.56 is now available... so you can Orgle to your heart's content!
New in this release is the Winamp Orgler^TM which powers the Charts experience. Check it out...




What's a Winamp Orgler^TM?
The Orgler lets you track, chart and share your Winamp listening history.

What does that really mean?
Each time you listen to a song through Winamp, while the Orgler is enabled, it sends the basic metadata (e.g. song name and artist name) associated with that file to Winamp. Currently the Orgler only supports local media playback, but not streaming playback (internet radio), however we are currently in planning for future enhancements. The Orgler is a community driven feature so the more you & your friends use it... and the more time it has to grow... the more robust it will become. We're pretty excited because with the size of the Winamp community worldwide, it has the potential to cover so many styles of music, in so many places.

Am I automatically Orgling?
Nope, you are not automatically Orgling. To start, you need to do two things. First, you need to download Winamp 5.56 which already includes the Orgler plug-in (technically, you can use 5.5x & download the Orgler plug-in separately but it's recommended that you just use the latest and greatest). Secondly, you need to log-in using your Winamp.com username & password. Don't have a Winamp.com username & password? No problem... you can register here.

Why should I Orgle?
You see, the Orgler is just the beginning. Once you've signed-in and started Orgling, we can feature the eclectic musical tastes of the Winamp community. The Charts, available in both the media player & on Winamp.com, allow you to stay on top of the latest trends by seeing which songs and artists are popular. View worldwide charts or filter down by a specific country or time period. You can even view your own listening history by selecting "My Charts" (media player feature only) to see what you've spent your time listening to today, this week or last month.

How do I add Charts to my Winamp Player?
To add Charts to Winamp, go to your media library tab and select "Online Services". Then browse through the "Featured Services" or you can use the online services search box. Once you've found "Winamp Charts" in the gallery, simply click the "+Add to Winamp" button.

Watch the below video for a quick demo & tour:

Need technical support? Having a problem with Winamp Pro? Or do you have an open question that you've been trying to resolve? If so, try one the following links for help to commonly asked Winamp questions and issues.

Winamp Technical Support

• Winamp Player Help
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If you are experiencing problems that cannot be resolved using any other method, then a clean install may do the trick. Follow these instructions to do a clean install of Winamp.

Note: A clean install will cause you to loose current settings. If you are just upgrading to a newer version of Winamp 5.x then you can just install straight on top of the previous version of Winamp 2.x or 5.x (but not Winamp3), thus keeping all your current settings etc.

The developers over at Moviefone just created a pretty slick Online Service for watching Top HD Trailers from right inside Winamp. To add the Online Service to your Winamp player, click on the Media Library tab and select Online Services. Once you're in the gallery you can either browse by category, most popular, or recently added. But in this case, you know exactly what you're looking for, so you can just use the search box and type in "Top HD Trailers".





When you've found the Top HD Trailers Online Service in the gallery, simply click the "+ Add to Winamp" button to add this online service to your Winamp. Now thanks to the Moviefone team, you're ready to watch the latest HD trailers.





While in the gallery be sure to check out other Online Services. If you're interested in learning how to create your own, read the post about Winamp's Online Services beta program. It has a lot of information for developers and shows you where/how to get started.

Have you ever been playing one of your playlists & noticed that it skipped over a song? You'll only notice this happening if you're paying close attention, but what's happening is that Winamp can't find the file so it skips to the next song rather than stopping playback.

If you have a large music collection or even have music stored in different directories/drives, chances are that some of your audio files may not be available (e.g. external hard drive is not turned on, or you may have moved or deleted some songs).

The reason Winamp skips over the song is that there's nothing more annoying than when you've started a playlist and playback keeps getting interrupted to alert you about missing files. On the other hand, it would be pretty cool to know which songs Winamp can't find, so that you can better organize your media library.

Thankfully, there's a really easy way to highlight missing files in your playlist.





Steps:

1) Go to Options >> Preferences
2) Under "Jump To File", select "Missing Files"
3) Put a check mark next to "Highlight the background of missing playlist entries"
4) Once selected you can click on Options to customize the background colors.

We're reaching out to all of the blog readers to ask for your participation in testing a new Winamp plugin that will send your listening history to Winamp so that we can build some sweet new features that will allow everyone to see the eclectic musical tastes of the Winamp universe.

More specifically, the Winamp team is working on a future release of a "Charts" experience within the Winamp Client and on Winamp.com, where users can view the most popular songs & artists being listened to across the Winamp user base (and you'll also get a slick web based presentation of your own listening activity).

The Charts experience leverages music listening data which is collected via the Orlger plug-in. Each time you listen to a song through Winamp (while the plug-in is enabled), it sends the basic metadata associated with that file to Winamp. Currently the plug-in only supports local media playback (streaming playback may be available in a future version).

To help make this project successful, we need your help; a) so you can report any issues with the plug-in functionality, and b) so we can start filling up the database w/ your musical tastes (even Yanni fans can participate).

If you're interested, please check out the below instructions:


Step 1
Be sure you are using Winamp version 5.5 or later. Download the latest version

Step 2
Make sure Winamp.exe is not running

Step 3
Download the Plug-in from - http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/221993

Step 4
Install the Plug-in.
- After the plug-in is installed, open (run) Winamp
- The Winamp Preference window will be opened to the "Orgler" section.
- Click on Login. You will be required to sign-in using your Winamp.com (or AOL/AIM) account information. If you're not registered go to the following URL to set-up a new account - https://new.aol.com/productsweb/?promocode=825431

Step 5
Since the Winamp Charts page hasn't launched yet, you have two ways of verifying that the Plug-in is reporting your listening history:
- In your Winamp directory, you can see the data recorded to the "orgler.log" file - (C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Winamp\orgler.log)
- For those less technically inclined, you should try this options instead.... since the Winamp Charts & Profile pages haven't launched, in the meantime you can go to www.music.aol.com/profile and you'll be able to view your 10 most recently played songs. You'll need to log into the AOL Music Profile page with the same account information you used when you installed the plug-in. By default the AOL Music profile page is set to private. If you want to allow others to view your profile (and listening history), you can change the setting to public

Step 6
The final step is to listen to your Winamp media library as often as possible. Be sure to leave a comment below:
- Let us know if you're participating in the beta program and from which country you'll be listening
- Once you've had a chance to use the plug-in, please provide feedback (your experience, issues, bugs, enhancements, etc.)


We hope you take this opportunity to be one of the early adopters. Your support is appreciated and with your help, we look forward to launching this new feature.