Windows Media Audio

Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high resolution audio. A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity (the regular WMA format is lossy). WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.

This article is about audio encoding and decoding software. For the container file format, see .wma.
Windows Media Audio
Filename extension
.wma
Internet media typeaudio/x-ms-wma
Developed byMicrosoft
Initial releaseAugust 17, 1999 (1999-08-17)
Type of formatAudio
Open format?No
Free format?No
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