Current Winamp 1.x, 2.x, 5.x Version: 0.2 (04/11/2002)
Current Winamp3 Version: 1.0 (11/18/2003)
By Robert Hutzel
Power Hour is a simple Win32 application that advances Nullsoft's Winamp player to the next track after a designated number of seconds. For an hour of music, 60 tracks will be played for 1 minute each. This is useful at parties to automate having to keep track of the time and stay near the computer. The entire application consists of a single executable which can be downloaded below.
Winamp3 is not fun to code for and is poorly written, in my opinion. I had always planned to support it, but the development kit is still not complete as of this writing and is poorly documented, where at all. I could not ignore, however, the emails I continued to receive requesting a version of PowerHour that would support it. This resulting script is at least functional, and I really hope it serves its purpose as well as the Winamp2 version did.
Power Hour is freeware, meaning it may be downloaded and used at no cost.
Screenshot
Documentation
First launch Winamp and load it with plenty of tracks. Then click the Start button to begin playback. Track advances are essentially the equivalent of clicking Winamp's Next Track button. For this reason, there is no problem with modifying the playlist once Power Hour has begun. You'll most likely want to make sure the first song in the playlist is selected before beginning.
Quickly note that if a track is shorter than the time interval you set, the clock will still run down to 0 before advancing. This is because polling for playback status would be inefficient especially when most songs are longer than one minute. Also, if the playlist contains less than the usual 60 entries, playback will normally stop after the last song. However, if Winamp's repeat button is selected, play will loop to the top of the list and continue infinitely.
The Winamp3 code is a simple MAKI script that can be loaded as a plugin. Go to Preference > Add-Ons/SkinMods > Add > Browse... and load up the XML file provided below. Make sure that the .maki file is in the same directory when you do so. While the script is loaded, the playlist will advance to the next track when the song reaches the one minute mark.
Download
Winamp Downloads (Versions 1.x, 2.x, 5.x)