Convert WMA to MP3

How to Convert to MP3

1. 1

   Add your WMA files

   Up to 200 MB each and twenty at a time, a whole ripped album in one pass.

2. 2

   Choose a bitrate

   192 kbps suits a typical WMA rip. Match or slightly exceed whatever the source was.

3. 3

   Click Convert and download

   Artist, title and album come across as ID3 tags that any player reads.

Why WMA is worth getting out of

Windows Media Audio was Microsoft's answer to MP3 and it was competitive in its day. The problem is everything since: no phone plays it without extra software, macOS does not read it, most car stereos refuse it, and even Windows has quietly stopped treating it as a first-class format. Libraries ripped from CDs in the 2000s with Windows Media Player are full of it, and they are effectively stranded. Converting to MP3 is how those files become playable again, not because MP3 is better, but because MP3 is the one thing that works everywhere.

The only format here that no browser can decode

Every other converter in this section has a shortcut: browsers decode MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A and Ogg natively through the Web Audio API, so some operations can skip the 8 MB audio engine entirely. WMA has no such path: no browser decodes it, on any platform, and there is no sign that will change. That means this page always loads the engine, and the first conversion waits for that download. It is cached afterwards, so a batch of fifty files pays the cost once.

Protected files cannot be converted

Some WMA files bought from online stores in the 2000s carry DRM, and those cannot be decoded by anything except the original licensed player on the machine that was authorised. This page will fail on them, and so will every other converter; the protection is doing its job. A file that plays in Windows Media Player on your own computer but fails here is almost certainly protected. Files you ripped from your own CDs are not protected and convert normally.

Tags survive the trip

WMA stores metadata in the ASF container, and a library ripped with Windows Media Player generally has artist, album, track number and year filled in properly. All of it is carried into the MP3 as ID3v2.3 tags, the version Windows Explorer, phones and car stereos read without complaint. Turning the option off produces a clean file with no metadata at all, which is occasionally what you want.

Frequently asked questions