According to the developers, it allows you to achieve a similar quality to MP3 at half the lower bitrate, which in their opinion, and should attract the user. In practice, the files are the most common wma 8, even at 128 kbit / s noticeably losing the sound quality is not only a cd but also MP3 files created with lame. In fact, at least some advertised achieve wma can show only bitrates below 96 kbit / s on which the quality of MP3 files plummeted. On the other hand, the same bitrate Vorbis on these transfers music to more adequately, while the metal ringing at the wma is becoming increasingly annoying. In addition, forgetting to turn off the drm protection when creating files, you can easily find themselves in a situation where you created the same wma tethers just will not play. Recently appeared wma format 9 in backward-compatibility mode had little advantage over wma 8, and the most interesting (and quality) codec wma 9 pro has no hardware support.
The undoubted advantage of wma is a high popularity (Guess why) among Windows users and, consequently, a good support for manufacturers of portable devices. A significant portion of MP3 players manufactured today, is able to play wma files 7 / 8 is no worse than MP3. However, if you are not an unhappy owner of flash – based MP3 player with a 64/128 mb of memory for which you want to put as much music, do not bother 'advantage' wma to MP3.