Why mp3's?

[PatTheRat]

When I burn a cd to my hard drive, it default saves them as wma's. If this is always the case when using windows, why did mp3's become so popular?

[dimmy]

windows media is crap thats why.

i think there is a way of setting it to download as MP3 but i cant for the life of me remember where the hell it is.

better it to download musicmatch, you can get a free version which will rip MP3 and it's really easy to use but it dose seem to take longer. but it may be quicker if you change the quality it rips at.

[OBonio]

MP3s pre-date WMA by a fair few years and became popular in the mid to late 90s.  They have no mechanism to stop copying and illegal downloading.  WMA is MS's attempt at an equivalent codec (coder/decoder) which, I think, has something called DRM (Digital Rights Management) available to it.  Not only is WMA smaller when compressed, using DRM with it can potentially stop the illegal download and copying of copyrighted music.

Personally, I still prefer mp3s as MS already has us over a barrel with many things.  I dread to think what they will do if WMA becomes the norm.  The end of the internet and life as we know it maybe ;o).

[IndieSinger]

All you need to do is open Windows Media Player, goto Tools -> Options -> Rip Music and change "Windows Media Audio" to "mp3".