How can I import a .wma file into iTunes? I was going to try converting it to mp3 with Audacity, but it didn’t recognise the format when I tried to open it.
Can’t you just drag it in? iTunes doesn’t really support .wma, but it should convert it and put a copy into the default music directory.
Wait, I think you might be on a mac?
iTunes should convert WMA files unless it has DRM.
iTunes supports WMA conversion on either OS X or Windows. It has supported it on both platforms for several years now. It’ll convert it to whatever format you have selected for imports in your preferences. It will not convert protected WMA files though.
Audacity is really of limited use, and next to worthless as a converter since it only supports AIFF, WAV, MP3, and (of course) Ogg, along with a couple of really limited-use formats. I tried it for a while for doing some original audio work, but it’s clunky compared to a lot of other audio programs and has a tendency to crash on my system. Worth slightly more than what you pay for it.
If you need to do conversions and have more options available, you can use some 3rd party solutions. Switch seems to be a popular choice. And there are some other hints here.
Thanks for the information. It must be a protected file. I can listen to it as it was sent, but not in iTunes.
Sleel: Thanks for the heads-up on Switch. I’ll check it out after I wake up. I got Audacity because I wanted to get a song from a DVD I own. It’s been a while so I don’t remember the sequence, but it was a bit of a chore. There was another program that I tried to use to edit the song once I had it on my computer, but all I could get out of it was static. So I do have the song on iTunes, but it does have some extraneous stuff at both ends.
Can’t believe I totally forgot about ffmpegX. It’s an open source project that consolidates about 20 UNIX tools into on application. It will convert just about anything into just about anything. Works with both sound and video. It doesn’t edit, but if you’ve got a tool for editing it’ll probably be able to convert your file into something that’s usable by that program.
Not exactly relevant to your problem since I don’t think anything will convert or edit protected WMA, but it’s a good resource to have. Less OS Xy than Switch, but free and very powerful.