Laser Disc Music

WMA is Microsoft’s own format for storing digital music (music downloads) WMA stands for Windows Media Audio.

WMA is the default format used by Windows Media Player. For example when you rip a CD with Windows Media Player, it will store your music as WMA files.

WMA files are often used by online music stores, because they can also be protected from being used on another computer. (This is called digital rights management, DRM for short.)

Microsoft created the WMA format after MP3 was already in widespread use. (See our article What is MP3?)

Why did Microsoft create their own format when MP3 was already established?

1. MP3 can’t be protected from copying. Microsoft wanted to provide a music format that could be sold on the Internet without risk of copying.
2. Microsoft needed a format to compete with Apple. The iPod & iStore was taking off, and Apple has their own copy-protected format.
3. Microsoft wanted their own music format for portable music players, with an intent to dominate the technology for digital music.

Music can be encoded at different quality levels with both WMA & MP3. The quality is most often specified as a bitrate. WMA sounds better than MP3 for music encoded at very low bitrates (e.g. 64kbps). The difference between the two formats is marginal, if any, for higher bitrates.

At the time WMA was created, dialup connections were common and hard disc sizes were far smaller, so sounding good at low bitrates was a big advantage for WMA. Now that broadband is common, and standard hard discs will hold 10,000 albums, and music is typically encoded at much higher bitrates (256kbps is becoming common), WMA’s low-bitrate advantage over MP3 is irrelevant for most people.

I went to a presentation from Microsoft once, where they explained how WMA was going to take over the world. A lot of us believed them. But it didn’t happen.

1. Most people who buy music online have an iPod & iTunes and use the iStore – no WMA here.
2. Portable music players almost never bother to put on their packaging anymore that they support WMA. There’s no major consumer demand for it.
3. Online music stores are increasingly offering unprotected MP3s for purchase.

WMA’s not quite a dead format, because there are still online music stores using it, and it’s also the default formatting for ripping CDs in Windows Media Player, but you could say it’s marginalized.

Should you keep you music in WMA? See our article Should I Use WMA?.