Music/ iTunes (probably newbie) Question

Hey guys-
just got first Mac (10.5) and am loving it, APART FROM (and here we go) the music.

My PC used to format all my CDs into .wma format for Windows Media Player, which was fine. Now, however, it turns out ITunes refuses to play wma! For marketing reasons, whatever that means.

So I tried using a programme to convert everything into .mp3. But this takes forever and more importantly it does not bring the album info into the ITunes library- i.e I get millions of songs, all jumbled up with no albums, which would have to have their album info manually entered. No chance! Also I get annoyed with all the bugging to use Istore.

My (by far) preferred option is to just get Windows Media Player for Mac, but having downloaded it there is no library, its just a bare player. Is there no EXACT copy of WMP, with library included, just like in Windows? Or some other Media Player which has a library and lets me use .wma?

Tearing hair out! Many thanks for any help.

WMA is a proprietary Microsoft format, so it's very difficult for Apple to support it in iTunes on the Mac. Microsoft also has essentially no interest in supporting WMA on anything other than Windows.

On Windows, iTunes can use the system's WMA support to convert WMA files to MP3 or another supported format. If you still have a PC (or access to a PC) then you can install iTunes for Windows and have it convert your Windows Media Player library. It should maintain album information.

Once your music is converted, you can bring your iTunes library over to your Mac using a CD, iPod, or network.

I use iTunes on the PC side because I have an iPod, but I always made sure to convert everything to mp3. I don't like proprietary formats and being stuck with that stuff is always a pain.