WMA vs MP3
Use MP3. WMA was Microsoft’s answer to MP3 and sounds about as good, but it never played reliably outside Windows, and today little besides Windows Media Player and VLC opens it. Converting WMA to MP3 makes an old music library play everywhere.
Last updated
Choose WMA when
- An old Windows Media Player library you are leaving untouched.
- Files protected with Windows Media DRM, which cannot be converted anyway.
Choose MP3 when
- Phones, cars, speakers and every music app.
- Sharing and uploading.
What WMA actually is
WMA was Microsoft's competitor to MP3, bundled with Windows and with the Windows Media Player ripping defaults, which is why so many CD collections ripped in the 2000s are in it. It was also a vehicle for digital rights management on early music stores.
A WMA bought from an early music store may be DRM-locked, and no conversion can lawfully unlock it. A WMA you ripped yourself converts without any trouble.
What MP3 actually is
MP3 discards the parts of a sound that psychoacoustic models say you are least likely to hear, then compresses the rest. It was the format that made digital music portable, and while newer codecs beat it at every bitrate, nothing matches its compatibility.
Converting an MP3 to another lossy format compounds the damage, because the second encoder is guessing at audio the first one already threw away.
WMA and MP3 side by side
| WMA | MP3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Extension | .wma | .mp3 |
| Media type | audio/x-ms-wma | audio/mpeg |
| Inside the file | Windows Media Audio | MPEG-1 Layer III |
| Compression | Lossy | Lossy |
| One minute of stereo | 1 MB or so | 1 to 2.4 MB |
| Plays on | Windows, and very little on phones or Macs | everything, including car stereos and hardware twenty years old |
| We can write it | Yes | Yes |
Questions
Is WMA better quality than MP3?
At the same bitrate they are very close; WMA was slightly better at low bitrates. That does not outweigh MP3 playing everywhere.
Why won’t some WMA files convert?
Music bought from old online stores was often protected with Windows Media DRM, which no converter is allowed to remove. Unprotected WMA files convert normally.