Winamp Turns to Deezer for Its First Paid Streaming Service

PARIS — Winamp Group has agreed to relaunch the historic media player with a subscription-based streaming service powered by French digital music platform Deezer. Formalized on July 1, the white-label partnership gives Deezer responsibility for the backend infrastructure and licensing catalog.

The agreement will bring a direct-to-consumer paid music tier to Winamp for the first time in its 28-year history. Deezer will provide its global music catalog, rights clearance, and cloud streaming technology, while Winamp retains full operational control over software design, consumer branding, and subscriber account management. The terms were outlined in commercial presentations for Deezer’s “Deezer for Business” division.

Winamp’s new application is being engineered as a hybrid audio platform. Users will be able to access Deezer’s on-demand streaming catalog while also managing local file storage, connecting external cloud libraries, streaming podcast feeds, and accessing internet radio directories. Winamp has said the software will include interface customization, discovery utilities, and social sharing tools.

Pricing structures and supported operating systems have not yet been released ahead of the scheduled 2027 rollout. Winamp Group has indicated that additional technical specifications and product previews for the Deezer-backed player will be distributed in the coming months.

The platform is intended to operate alongside Winamp’s traditional standalone software. Company metrics show that the legacy desktop application still has an active base of more than 40 million monthly users globally, and Winamp plans to add the Deezer subscription features to the legacy player after the standalone application debuts.

For Winamp, Deezer’s infrastructure addresses the long-standing challenge of operating a streaming service without direct licensing agreements with major record labels or proprietary streaming server farms. Under chief executive Alexandre Saboundjian, the company had announced in October 2018 that it would release an all-in-one streaming aggregator by 2019, but that version did not materialize because of difficulties integrating third-party streaming services without formal licensing frameworks. A refreshed desktop release, Winamp 5.9, was issued in 2022.

Deezer is pursuing the arrangement as it works to offset contracting numbers in its enterprise and business-to-business sector. In its financial results for the first half of 2026, the company reported that partner-driven subscriptions had fallen by approximately 800,000 year-over-year to 3.1 million. Revenue across the partner division declined 7.6 percent to 70.7 million euros ($76.8 million), largely because a regional bundling contract with Latin American e-commerce operator Mercado Libre expired.

Deezer executives told investors earlier this year that expanding enterprise partnerships remains an operational priority. The company has previously secured B2B distribution and white-label arrangements with European telecommunications operator Telenor and French utility provider EDF. The Winamp rollout will be Deezer’s highest-profile third-party software integration to date.

Winamp’s origins date to 1997, when Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev developed the player through their software outfit Nullsoft. Known for its modular equalizer, plugin support, and custom graphical skins, Winamp became one of the defining consumer applications of the early MP3 era. America Online (AOL) purchased Nullsoft in 1999 in an all-stock transaction valued between $80 million and $100 million.

AOL announced plans to discontinue Winamp and shut down its associated services in December 2013. In January 2014, Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy acquired the player and its Shoutcast broadcasting network; Radionomy was later reorganized as Winamp Group. Saboundjian acquired the brand a decade ago and has since led efforts to modernize it.

The software maker faced renewed scrutiny in September 2024 after publishing the source code for the classic Windows player on GitHub under the proprietary “Winamp Collaborative License.” Developers objected to restrictions prohibiting the distribution of modified forks. GitHub removed the repository weeks later after developers discovered that it contained proprietary third-party code owned by Microsoft and Dolby Laboratories.