I'd love a version of Winamp 2 that works on OS X.

I loved how minimal and fast it was. You didn't need to import and manage your media, just drag a folder onto it and blam, it's playing. Nice keyboard shortcuts, no extra crap.

So much of my music is still just folders of mp3s in /artist/album/*.mp3 format and I really can't be bothered importing it all into iTunes, meaning I just listen to the same few dozen albums I do have in iTunes.

That's how all of my music is organized to this day. I haven't tried using iTunes as a media player in a while because when I did, it either ran way too slowly for a basic media player and for some reason it always wanted to obfuscate where the files were, keeping them in (seemingly) arbitrary folders with 5-character names. No idea if it still does that but regardless, I only keep it around for the occasional backing up of my old iPad before doing an update.

These days I more often just drag the folder into the VLC playlist or even use an old version of Winamp if I just want to shuffle through everything or make a playlist. The idea that my music is "in" the media player is something I could never get on board with. The media player is just accessing files in easily located folders. The way iTunes and some others try to hide that fact bothers me on some weird curmudgeonly level.

Just FYI you can control whether or not iTunes manages your music folder and there is some customization in Pref > Advanced.

I chose to let it manage the files but reduced some of the folder nesting. It doesn't obfuscate file names and you can elect for Artist > Album > [file] structure or whatever your heart desires.

Try Vox. Not as good as Winamp 2, but as minimal as you can get.

User ylchaithanya on GitHub took my project and made it into a Chrome App that works on any OS.

https://github.com/captbaritone/winamp2-js/issues/2

Thanks captbaritone. Working on the chrome app. You can have a look at the first version here - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chromeamp/bmigmiii... New features like playlists etc, gonna come soon.

Same, about the file hierarchy. Makes the most sense to me. If VLC had a file browser panel, my OSX audio life would feel complete. You know what I really love though in the meantime? MOC on Linux.

foobar2000 is a more recent work from one of the original devs, and quite good if you're looking for minimalism and function over style.

And of course, if you're on Unixen, XMMS is pretty much a direct clone of the old Winamp (and used to even use the same skin by default).

Foobar's the only realistic alternative because it's the only one, that I know of, that supports the full gamut of plugins written to play video game/ancient computer audio files. Mostly because guys like Neill Corlett wrote all those plugins ~15-10 years ago when your only choices were Winamp or Foobar.

http://www.zophar.net/music.html

Audacious comes close, but isn't quite there. PSF2 support is mostly non-functional, for instance.

For me, I used foobar because it was the last one that didn't try to be 'smart' about shuffle play.

I use foobar2000 too, however I don't agree with "function over style", there are some skins and options that change it completely.

I think we should agree it's highly customizable, both for function or style.

Fair enough. I always left it on default, and it's not the prettiest thing then, or wasn't at the time.

Another capable linux alternative is Audacious.

My goto player these days is MOC.

If you like minimal players, recently came across a cool command line player: https://github.com/np1/mps-youtube Nice command line and interactive interface allows you to search and play music and videos (optional) from Youtube. Interface is minimal and functional ... give it a try

Quintessential Player is also very pleasant and for Linux there are plenty of players that are compatible with winamp skins and presets.

Nice to see some appreciation for AIMP2! This little player is lovable in every aspect.

I'm using the lite version, which is indistinguishable from the classic Winamp. It's been my default music player ever since MP3 came out :)

I'm still using 2.95 on Windows 8

In my pre-coffee blurry-eyed-ness, all I managed to see in your post was "I'm still using" then "Windows" then "95". I gotta say, the double-take was neck-breaking.