iTunes m4a to wma--- is that controversy truly good for apple?

Art, any on-line download site is going to have DRM in some form on their purchases. iPod users are faced with the same problem with songs purchased somewhere else besides iTunes, you can't get them on iPod because of the protection. It's basically a 2 way street, when you say it doesn't serve Apple well. How about the major record company's choosing to lock out the dominant portable music player on the market using protected WMA format?

There is a way around this if you or your daughter want to invest the time & the blank CD's, burn the purchases to an audio CD, use the audio CD to re-import as mp3. Now, the purchases are in mp3 format & should be transferable. Hope this helps. Happy New Year!

There's no reason to even want to convert anything to WMA. Any portable player that can play WMA files can also play MP3 files. Unlike WMA, which is a proprietary Microsoft format, MP3 is an "open" standard that virtually anyone can incorporate into their products. AAC's licensing arrangement is slightly more cumbersome than that for MP3s, but it too is sufficiently "open" that it is fairly easy for a third party to incorporate AAC encoders/decoders into their products. With the exception of the Apple Lossless format, Apple so far has taken a stance in favor of open formats, while Microsoft continues to try to rule a "closed" marketplace (Setting Windows Media Player to rip to protected WMA by default being just one example).

I feel your frustration - but - there are many free programs that will convert mp3 files to WMA files and vice versa. Also, the other 2 replies are valid and should be checked out first as I don't know how well these programs work.