I use iTunes for my music player on my computer (I don't own an ipod.) However, I had a lot of wma files so I let iTunes convert those to .mp3. However, now I have a ton of songs where I have both the wma version and the mp3 version. I would like to delete all the wma files I have and have them replaced by the newly created mp3 files (which were put into a separate itunes folder by itunes.) is there a way to do this easily with a program so i don't have to do it manually folder by folder?

Can't you just delete the .wma files and make itunes rescan your music library.

Because iTunes doesn't play .wma files. the reason why I don't just delete the files and let itunes rescan it is because I want those mp3 files to be put in their original folders in mymusic (where the wma files were before) instead of the separate itunes folder. I figure there must be a program out there that can do something like that, but i haven't found anything yet....

Your best bet is to prevent iTunes from managing your music files. You control where they're stored and their filesystem hierarchy and just let iTunes see and play them. Otherwise you may never be satisfied with the way iTunes keeps songs organized on disk.

So just put the MP3s files in the same hierarchy as your WMA files. you can leave them under the main folder they're in now and iTunes will continue to see them without any action. Or you can move them somewhere else and then toss them back into iTunes.

You can remove your WMA files and put them somewhere else for safe keeping. When iTunes no longer sees them you can use a tool to locate and remove them from its DB.

iTunify offers some tools you may find useful: http://www.mistatree.org/Shareware/iTunify/

I've now got all my music being managed by iTunes, but I keep my own file hierarchy. So I add tunes to the drive before letting iTunes see them.

I also keep all my music on an external volume which also holds the iTunes DB files. To do this you simply copy your iTunes folder to the other volume, make an alias of it, coy the alieas to where the folder is supposed to be and rename it to just "iTunes"

Something else you may find useful is accessing multiple databases with iTunes. If you hold down OPTION while starting it (SHIFT on Windows i believe) you will be prompted for an alternate DB location. Great way to keep multiple collections without intermingling them. They can overlap in tunes from disk of course if you're managing that yourself as mentioned above.

Bruno

All sorts of freeware apps can play back WMAs by using the codec system built into Windows. I can't imagine why iTunes couldn't do the same thing.

Because iTunes allows a user to encode music to a format as well as decode it for playback. Apple keeps things in sync between the Windows and Mac client, so if full WMA support is added on one side, then it would need to be added on the Mac side as well. And there isn't a free WMA encoder/decoder built into Quicktime or available as an addon. iTunes on both platforms looks to the Quicktime API to encode or decode files. Hence the need for a license. Though, Quicktime on Windows does tie into the codec layer on Windows to be able to playback files, so they do use that to offer a conversion as a possibility of breaking peoples music collections out of WMA format.

Then there is the iPod. Anything in iTunes should be able to be synced to an iPod. Apple would not only have to pay for an encoder license for WMA for Quicktime, but also pay for a decoder license for the iPods.

God forbid useful features trump making everything exactly the same.

It's exactly this sort of "I know what I'm doing, now shut up and mind your own business" attitude (Apple's, not yours) that is what makes iTunes (and the iPod and Quicktime Player) suck. Not the particular lack of WMA support (which I would never use); it's just a symptom.

Many companies do the same all the time. Why can't Windows Media Player out of the box play a standard MPEG-4 video file? Why can't the XBox 360 in Media Extender mode play anything beyond MPEG2? Why can't the Rio Karma play ATRAC, or the empeg AAC?

The lack of WMA isn't really a concern to the majority of people out there, and in fact it looks like the success of the iPod is helping to even possibly drive Microsoft away from their own proprietary codecs. The Zune for example can play AAC, as can the 360 (assuming it's not DRM, thats a different issue).

It is quite clear that iTunes isn't a power users program and won't satisfy most peoples needs here. But it's also not trying to be the ultimate swiss army knife program. It is however one of the few programs out there I can show people how to use to encode CDs and burn mixes even if they don't have any idea about the concepts behind doing such things. There isn't any configuration of LAME, no EAC ripping settings, and no worrying about a separate burning program. It just simply works to the satisfaction of most people out there.

iTunes is still the best music management program I've seen available for the Mac. And it's a lot better than the ones (including MusicMatch) i tried in Windows a few years ago. Of course iTunes just became usable for me after version 7. My main complaint right now is there's no "sort by" field to override the tags (so you can sort numbers within letters and artists by last name).

Bruno