AOL announced yesterday that it would be shutting down Winamp, the venerable media player that helped usher in an age of people listening to music on their computers, next month. But it seems that there may still be some hope for it yet.
According to TechCrunch, Microsoft is currently in talks with AOL to see if it can purchase the media player as well as Shoutcast, a streaming media service created by the same company that developed Winamp. AOL is reportedly gearing up to announce Shoutcast’s closure next week, according to TechCrunch’s anonymous source.
Winamp reportedly never quite found a home at its parent company, and while it boasted a userbase of more than 90 million music listeners in 2012, it seems that AOL has finally decided to cut it loose. Shoutcast is the platform for more than 50,000 free Internet radio stations, which may help explain why Microsoft might be interested in it.
While it’s not clear what use Microsoft would have planned for either service, Shoutcast’s network of radio stations could be something the company might add to its Xbox Music product as a new feature.
For its part, Microsoft declined to comment on the acquisition rumors.
