About iTunes and .WMA

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-08-18 05:10am

So a school mate quite graciously gave me a disk containing a heap of stuff by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I was all like "You rock man" and couldn't get home to get it onto the computer.

I listen to my music through iTunes, and all these songs are in .WMA, so I'm having trouble doing this, just adding it to my play list. Any suggestions as to what to do?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-08-18 05:15am

Convert them to MP3?

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-08-18 05:31am

Anemic though it sounds, I don't actually know how.

Redleader34 · Post by **Redleader34** » 2006-08-18 09:03am

Itunes should say convert to AAC and that should solve your problem

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-08-18 09:44am

Redleader34 wrote:Itunes should say convert to AAC and that should solve your problem

WMA is a proprietary format and isn't supproted by iTunes iirc. He would need to use a third party encoding program to do it (most are incredibly simple to use, however, and several are free). Although converting WMA to mp3 will degrade the quality somewhat, possibly significantly depending on the encoding methods used.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-08-18 10:39am

You'd have to transcode to AAC, ALE or MP3 in order to play in iTunes (since there is no QuickTime plugin for WMA)

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-18 11:42am

General Zod wrote:
Redleader34 wrote:Itunes should say convert to AAC and that should solve your problem
WMA is a proprietary format and isn't supproted by iTunes iirc. He would need to use a third party encoding program to do it (most are incredibly simple to use, however, and several are free). Although converting WMA to mp3 will degrade the quality somewhat, possibly significantly depending on the encoding methods used.

Actually, iTunes converts WMA to AAC or MP3 so iPod users can play it too. As long as it's not DRM-protected.

Import the WMA files into iTunes. If it doesn't convert them straight away, right click the file and press Convert To MP3 or Convert to AAC.

LMSx · Post by **LMSx** » 2006-08-18 07:01pm

If you go File ---> Add Folder/File to Library and there are .WMA files in it, iTunes should automatically offer to convert them to AAC. Otherwise, what Praxis said. It's a good idea to do it, and it's why iTunes is my preferred music player- AACs aren't as gigantic as Windows Media Player's WMA files.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-08-18 07:41pm

Excellent; thanks everybody. I've managed to get it happening.