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Windows Media Audio (.wma) files are a specialized form of Advanced Streaming Format (.asf) files. These files contain audio data that is compressed by using a new high-quality lossy audio compression scheme (codec) called MSAudio. Windows Media Audio files are meant to be used with high quality audio-only content.
A .wma file can be distributed using Windows Media Services. When a user requests a .wma file, Windows Media Services automatically creates a special type of announcement file (.wax) that directs the player to the content.
The .wma and .wax extensions can be registered to the default player chosen by the user. Thus, if you are using Windows Media Tools to create audio-only .asf files, renaming them with the .wma extension will increase their portability to different players.
Currently, Windows Media Player is the only player that has the decoding keys for the MSAudio codec. For more information about distributing decoding keys, see the Windows Media Audio Software Development Kit.
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