• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 10, 2007

Hoping to gain greater traction abroad, AOL has relaunched its Winamp media player in various iterations to suit the local idiosyncrasies of international markets.

Nearly 10 years old, the Winamp player's stateside adoption is stagnant at about 3 million users, according to comScore. The total worldwide Winamp audience, however, currently exceeds 60 million users.

To exploit this global scale, AOL for the first time will allow advertisers to cherry-pick which markets they want to target. Germany, for instance, has more than 4 million Winamp users, while Japan has over 3 million users.

"With Winamp's adoption in these different countries, we thought it was time to start offering the player in their different languages," reasoned an AOL spokesman. "It can only increase adoption."

With AOL's recent portal launches in India and Spain, this move to adopt its Winamp player for international users further signals the company's larger global ambitions. AOL is expected to relaunch its ad-supported Web portal in 14 countries over the next 18 months.

Other countries in which AOL is offering standard and customized ad packages for Winamp now include the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and Poland.

The new Winamp player has also been redesigned to include music album art, a "More Like This" playlist feature, and an integrated browser so users can build and manipulate their playlists from sources across the Web. The new player also supports remote video access via game consoles, including the Nintendo Wii.