A minimalist terminal tool that converts WMA files to free audio formats. No GUI, no internet connection required, no bloat.
WMA is a proprietary Microsoft format built for DRM and Windows lock-in. A lot of MP3 players, budget DAPs and open firmware like Rockbox either skip WMA completely or play it wrong. My music library had a bunch of WMA files that my player refused to touch, and batch converting them when they are scattered across many folders is surprisingly difficult with most tools. So I built one that simply scans a directory and converts everything it finds.
AAC was originally an option but it is a proprietary format owned by a patent pool, so it was dropped. Demuze only outputs formats that are actually free.
- Scans any folder recursively for WMA files, including Standard WMA, WMA Lossless and WMA Pro
- Detects WMA by both file extension and magic bytes, so renamed files are caught too
- Converts to Opus or FLAC, both free and open formats
- Preserves all tags and album art across both output formats
- Only deletes the original after the converted file is confirmed written to disk
- Shows a live progress bar and CPU usage during batch conversions
Requirements. Python 3, ffmpeg, and mutagen.
pip install mutagen
ffmpeg must be installed and available in your PATH. Then run:
python3 demuze.py
Output formats:
1) Opus free and open, great quality at small size, recommended
2) FLAC free, lossless, zero quality loss, bigger files
Point it at your music folder and it handles the rest. Each original is only removed after its converted file is verified on disk, so nothing is lost if something goes wrong mid-batch.
This project is free software. See the LICENSE file included in this repository for the full terms.