Winamp 2
Winamp 2.0 was introduced on September 8, 1998. Note that the 2.x versions of Winamp began to gather much steam, and ended making the program one of the most downloaded software for Microsoft Windows. With this version, we say improved playlist usability, a more accurate equalizer, more plug-ins, and playlist and equalizer windows skins.
Winamp 2.10 was released on March 24, 1999, and it included a new version of the “Llama” demo.mp3 which featured a musical sting and bleating.
Moving right along, on June 22, 2000, Winamp had over 25 million registrants.
Winamp3
Note the new spelling convention of Winamp3. This was intentional in order to include “mp3″ in its name.
Winamp3 was released on August 9, 2002, and was a copmplete overhaul of version 2. It was now rewritten on the the Wasabi application framework, which offered additional flexibility and functionality. Only thing is many users found it to be a power hog, consuming too many system resources and was more unstable. They also missed some functionality, including the ability to find or counted the total duration of tracks in a playlist. As well, Winamp3 wasn’t backward compatible with Winamp 2 plugins and skins and plugins. These above issues resulted in many users refusing to commit to a permanent install.
Nullsoft subsequently continued the development of Winamp 2 to include versions 2.9 and 2.91 in 2003. The beta versions of 2.92 and 2.95 included some of the same functionality that we would find in Winamp 5. Incidentally, Nullsoft released an alpha version of Winamp3 for Linus on October 9, 2001, but unfortunately have never updated it since.