Yahoo! Messenger Now Playing plugin for Winamp

for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, 8.1 or older

Free Winamp plugin that sets your Yahoo! Messenger status with the current song you're listening. No viruses, no adware, no spyware, and it doesn't advertise itself in your status, like other lame programs.

The Problem:

• You use Winamp to listen to your music
• You want to show what you're listening to your Yahoo! Messenger buddies!
• Unfortunately, no older Winamp plugin is working anymore! Most of the Winamp plugins to change the YM status are not updated since 2002-2005, since YM 6.0 or older! And, you don't want to run a separate stand-alone program for this (but if you do then just use the best status manager around, HyperIM).

So, how can I show what music I listen in Winamp in my Yahoo! Messenger status?

Use this plugin! From the author of HyperIM comes this DLL, which is a native Winamp plugin that does exactly one thing: it works as advertised!

Below is a comparison chart between my 'Yahoo! Messenger Now Playing' plugin and a similar program, called Y!Amp 9.8. Judge for yourself...

	Yahoo! Messenger Now Playing	Y!Amp 9.8
Supports Yahoo! Messenger 9.0	YES	NO
Supports Yahoo! Messenger 8.1/8.0	YES	YES
Supports Yahoo! Messenger 7.5/7.0	YES	YES
Headphones icon in status	YES (including with YM 9)	Claimed to work. However for many people it just shows A187A2 instead of any kind of icon.
Busy, Idle icons	YES
Program type	Winamp in-process plugin (runs with Winamp)	Stand-alone (uses its own process and resources)
Installed size	14.5 kilobytes	2253 kilobytes (155x larger)
Speed	Ultra-fast (written in C++)	Slow (Visual Basic runtime + fact that it's stand-alone)
Supported song details	Artist, Title, Genre, Album, Year, Track Number, Progress bar, Song length, Bitrate, Samplerate, Channels, Volume, Playlist position, and Playlist length	Just song title
Requires to save your password in YM	NO	YES (privacy breach!)
Supports multiline status	YES	NO
Kicks you out of Invisible	NO	YES
Advertises itself	NO	Yes, it puts a weblink in your status when you open it and after you close it
Stability	-	Crashed YM on first use.
Final score	14	2

Installation and Help

1. If you are upgrading from a previous version, close Winamp if it is currently running
2. Download the installer (see the head of this page), which is a ZIP file
3. The installer is inside the archive. Most probably you will be able to double click the file directly from the archive viewer to run the installer
4. If not, extract the file somewhere and run it from there.
5. After the installer is done, open Winamp, go to Preferences, click General purpose list item in lower left panel, and double click Yahoo! Messenger Now Playing to configure the plugin as you like it.

FAQ

Help!! It doesn't work for me with Yahoo! Messenger 9.0!

Please restart Winamp if you installed YM 9.0 while Winamp was running, so that the plugin will detect there's a different YM version installed.

Help!! It STILL doesn't work for me with Yahoo! Messenger 9.0!

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 has a new, different method of changing the status programatically. Because this plugin has to be compatible with both types of status changing (8.0 or older, and 9.0), the current version of your Yahoo! Messenger is read from the Registry. Sometimes, it can happen that after you install Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 over Yahoo! Messenger 8.0, the Registry doesn't get updated, and this plugin will think yo're using YM 8.0. Using the status changing method for YM 8.0, instead of YM 9.0, will ofcourse not work correctly. Solution: first uninstall YM 8.0 completely, and only after that install the newer YM 9.0. Alternatively, you can manually change the following Registry key:
Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\yahoo\pager
Value name: Double click the value Version to edit it
Value data: Change 8.x.y.z to 9.0.0.922 (the main idea is, to begin with the digit 9)

Dude, this doesn't work with multiple instances of Yahoo! Messenger open!

Automatic detection of more than one logged in Yahoo! ID is not possible. However you may want to try out HyperIM, which allows modifying the status for more than one instance of Yahoo! Messenger, by specifying all the desired IDs manually...

This plugin is the best! Why isn't it published on winamp.com?

Somewhere in May 2007 the winamp.com site has been restructured. Apparently their upgrade was *so well done*, that since that day no plugins can be added or updated. If, and when, their submission system will work again, this plugin will be added to their database ASAP.

Found a Bug?

Please use this forum thread to post any problems with this plugin. In order to post you need to have a forum account; registering is free.