On the Future of WinCue
May 9, 2008
Some of you may wonder, what happened to WinCue? The web site has not been updated for over four years, and there has been no activity whatsoever on the SourceForge project.
I recently received an e-mail from a user who wanted to report a bug. Here’s my reply:
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:16:27 +0200
From: “Anders Sandvig” <anders@wincue.org>
To: …
Subject: Re: WinCue bugSorry about the late reply, I don’t check this e-mail address as often as I should.
Thank you for your interest in WinCue. It’s great for me to see that people still use the plug-in, even after all these years. I feel a bit bad about “abandoning” the project, but my time has been limited, and I guess I have lacked the motivation to pick it up again. Personally I’m not very pleased with the direction that Winamp has taken, so I have been looking for other solutions.
I still think the core idea of WinCue is relevant, because even now that every media player on the market has a built-in media library with searching capabilities, I have yet to find a player that is as easy to use as the WinCue library. That is of course just my personal opinion, but I happen to know that there are a few other people out there who think the same.
Anyway, because of this I started thinking about creating a new media player with the WinCue media library sort of integrated. The plan was to make a general media library implementation with searching functionality and add that to an existing player source with a nice GUI on top. I even started implementing the new library for Wincue2 (the source code for the library in the new player and Wincue2 would be the same), but then I sort of stopped working on it due to lack of time.
I haven’t decided if I will continue with the Wincue2 project, but if people (like you) request changes to the existing 1.40 version, I might be able to fix that in much shorter time.
So, I guess my answer to your question is that I don’t really know what will happen in the future, but I will look into the possibility of releasing an updated version of WinCue 1.40.
Anders
As explained in the e-mail, I feel a bit bad about abandoning the project. Now, this happened for several reasons, the two major ones being lack of time and interest. Up until now I was also under the impression that the previous user base of WinCue was long gone, and had moved on to better software for managing their musical experience. When I finally tok the time to go through my web site statistics, I was a bit shocked to see that www.wincue.org still has thousands of visitors every month. Even in April 2008, WinCue 1.40 had more than thousand downloads. As outdated as I feel the current version is, the numbers make me suspect that there are still people out there who use Winamp and my plug-in.
Again, I must apoligize for staying out of reach for so long. The site forum was hacked years ago, and I never bothered to fix it. I hardly ever checked my wincue.org e-mail, and the few times I did, I rarely took the time to write you back.
So, the question is now, what will be the future of WinCue? Should I pick up the project again, and if I do, should I fix bugs in the old version of rewrite the entire thing from scratch? Is Winamp even worth using these days? As I mention in the e-mail I have also thought about writing a new media player alltogether, but I realize this might be a huge and time-consuming project, so any suggestions are welcome.
May 10, 2008 at 09:39
I didn’t even know I was on your mailinglist, but yes, I too am still using the win amp&cue combo. And it’s working like a charm. The only thing that would make it better for my use is adding boolean search capabilities.
About writing your own mediaplayer: there are lots of them already, and most take plugins…
Good luck, and thank you for giving us wincue.
May 10, 2008 at 10:03
Hi there
great to hear from your. I think you should go for the plans for wincue2 you had for a long time ago. I will still use it with winamp,so I don’t need another player. It would be nice to have an jukebox option with password in wincue.
Thanks.
May 10, 2008 at 05:07
I am still using WinCue. I use Winamp with WinCue, DFX, and PaceMaker and lyrics plugins. So would not be interested in any new player unless it can offer me all that functionality!
I would vote for improved WinCue2 plugin with better integration with Winamp and support for new skins and maybe ratings that are stored into the MP3 file? I think the Winamp media library sucks so a full replacement for that would be great.
We will be waiting for more news, good luck Anders!
May 10, 2008 at 05:24
Still using wincue!! Only one so far that works well with untagged MP3’s because of smart filename routines. REALLY want fullscreen jukebox feature that shows simple interface to find, queue and display songs as a kiosk.
May 25, 2008 at 05:53
Still using wincue too. Listening to mp3s is just not conducive or enjoyable without wincue.
No votes on which to choose, i just hope the wincue site remains! it’ll be a pain to locate my backups if i need to install it on a new computer.
May 28, 2008 at 01:33
Thanks for the feedback. I can assure you that I will keep the site up as long as people still use it.
June 12, 2008 at 06:03
I use wincue still n all, it’s far better than the medial library in minamp; particularly the auto cue function. It would be nice if wincue could steal the skins from the new winamp tho. I hope you find time to work on wincue2, please let me know of any updates!
Cheers
June 14, 2008 at 05:26
Still using wincue. Still wondering if its been updated. I’ve looking at Itunes and Media Monkey and I still want wincue on top of winamp. Wincue is excellent and I been using it this entire time still in 2008. Winamp is still my main player. So yes it is relevant! .. Its very helpful. Love it. Haven’t stopped using it at all. Still wanting Wincue to be updated.
June 29, 2008 at 05:33
I’ve used Wincue as part of my DJ control surface using Winamp for about 7 or 8 years now. (100+ shows a year, all using Wincue to search fast!) With a library of WELL over 100,000 songs, Wincue is the only software that I have found that can handle searching though a constantly changing database without crashing, running too slow, or having to take a long time (hours/days) to rebuild this huge library. Wincue has topped even the most expensive DJ software that I have trialed (many of these softwares of very overrated, Winamp+Wincue works just good, or better.)
I would definitely like to see an updated Wincue. I would like to see it as a standalone program, which would drag/drop into any media player (mainly Winamp of course). This would help with moving files around. A portable (USB flash drive) version? Drag and drop? I am full of ideas: please feel free to contact me.
July 31, 2008 at 12:52
I’m using WinCue for so long I can remember, love the simplicity in use and the speed, but most the AutoCue option and the ability to pick songs from the search results. And WinCue is ideal for parties.
I don’t need a lot of new complexity, menu options or a total new player. But options are always ok, I like to customize settings. A more random AutoCue and boolean searching are on my wishlist. That wouldn’t take you too long, would it
August 21, 2008 at 05:03
Yes, pick it up again!
it’s the best plugin for winamp!
August 22, 2008 at 02:50
Hello!
Very good project!
I am for the future of wincue!
Thx!
September 1, 2008 at 09:07
I just wanted to let you know that wincue is part of what keeps me using winamp. I still think that winamp is the best music/media player out there, but I would not be able to use it without wincue and autocue. Thanks so much for all of your work in the past and any work you may choose to do in the future.
September 25, 2008 at 10:56
I am a fan of any future of wincue. Be it in the form of another program, or a new version. I still use it to this day as well. It is still the best written search plug-in I have come across for music. I like it ever better than what has been programmed into foobar2000. Just wanted to say thanks, and I was shocked to see any update on the website. Appreciate that!
October 15, 2008 at 10:44
Jeg bruker også wincue daglig enda. Og ikke PRØV DEG med å bloate det med masse nye funksjoner..!
Hihi. Bugfixing er nok en fin ting.
Få opp ting i subversion eller whatever du liker av versjonskontroll, sånn at jeg kan sjekke ut koden og submitte fixes
October 15, 2008 at 02:06
@William The source code is already in Subversion on SourceForge:
http://sf.net/projects/wincue/.
If anyone wants to contribute with fixes or patches, they are of course welcome to do so. Just e-mail me the changes and I will apply them to the repository.
Also, if you want to discuss write access to the repository, feel free to contact me.
October 18, 2008 at 09:26
Have been using wincue + winamp for the last 7 years, both for dj’ing and at home. turned alot of heads with the simple and straight forward function of this plug-in…
now that I switched to mac some months ago, I experimented a bit with iTunes but came to the conclusion that it doesn’t even remotely match the features winamp can offer when it is combined with your awesome plug-in…
so I went through the hassle of installing “crossover” on my mac, which natively runs windows applications within mac osX… now I’m finally able to use wincue again!
what good is a bloated do-it-all media center/player program, when it just doesn’t give you the specific functionality you need? (which is btw the reason I never use the winamp media library, wincue is just so much simpler and faster!)
thank you for writing such an amazing plugin and keep up the good work! - Jesper
October 28, 2008 at 05:31
Absolutely love the WinCue plugin. It just works. Simple and fast. I know professionals that prefer this before other expensive programs and libraries.
If continued maybe you can skip the MiniDisc feature now? Nobody uses it now I guess. The abaility to search for several words or exclude words would be cool, like “iron maiden & metallica -tribute” for all songs that contain “iron maiden” and “metallica” but not “tribute”.. something like that.
Anyway, amazing app, couldn’t live without it!