WMA Music

What is WMA music? WMA music, short for Windows Media Audio, is an audio format created by Microsoft to compete against MP3, which was quickly becoming the de-facto standard format for lossy compression. Even though Microsoft claims that .WMA music is able to deliver the same quality as MP3 at half the bitrates, that statement is certainly false. A more realistic number would be same quality at around 25% smaller bitrates - and that applies to low bitrates only. At 128kbps, it is easily beaten by Lame. WMA music may not be as popular as MP3, but it is still supported by a vast number of players and jukeboxes, including Winamp, Sonique, MusicMatch and J. River's Media Jukebox. Actually, mostly thanks to Microsoft's aggressive marketing tactics, WMA music becomes the second most widespread lossy format, only losing to the ubiquitous MP3.