 Winamp was first released in 1997, when Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev, formerly students at the University of Utah, integrated their Windows user interface with the Advanced Multimedia Products ("AMP") MP3 file playback engine.The name Winamp (originally spelled WinAMP) was a portmanteau of "Windows" and "AMP".The minimalist WinAMP 0.20a was released as freeware on April 21, 1997.