However, because they were under AOL authority, they had to stop its development, but the protocol was already shared on the Internet.

But it didn’t.Ī few months later Justin and Tom coded a P2P protocol called Gnutella, which was used in the core of the popular Sharaeza and Limewire file-sharing software. Two years later, he sold Winamp, SHOUTcast and his company, Nullsoft to AOL for the sum of $80 million dollars. With his collaborator Tom Pepper, he also developed SHOUTcast,a protocol that allows PCs to send a media stream through the Internet (like a web radio). It also supported plugins and skins: not very common features at this time for this type of software. Winamp was a huge technical innovation: this free player soon became a worldwide success. Justin Frankel created Winamp audio player back in 1997 when he was 20, at a time when music player software wasn’t really able to read mp3s in a simple way or create playlists and libraries. I really like the story behind REAPER and its original creator, because I find it inspiring and because it really helps to understand how REAPER became what it is now. Every DAW has a certain philosophy, a vision of audio manipulation and ergonomics, and therefore has a story to tell.

Reaper daw software