I listen to Canadian radio station 107.1 for their “Psychedelic Sundays.” They never disappoint.
This past Sunday I was backing up some files on my computer, not paying a whole lot of attention to the radio, when the music stopped me in my tracks. They were playing It Makes No Difference by The Band. I’m a huge fan of their music and have several of their tracks loaded on my Zen. How I missed this one is beyond me… it’s the kind of tune that makes you lean back in your chair, close your eyes and just listen.
So, I added it to my music library and transferred it to the flash drive I use with my docking station. Or so I thought. It never played. I checked the flash drive and sure enough, it’s listed, it just won’t play. Some poking around in my files and I realize that at least 1/3 of my library was downloaded in WMA format, but I never realized it because the Zen plays them all. This particular flash drive only recognizes MP3 format. And I have a boat load of this particular flash drive.
Crap. I have no way to convert them.
More research. At first it appeared that the only way to do it was to purchase a converter or subscribe to a service. But eventually, buried deep in the bowels of Google search, I found a solution; If you burn your tunes to a CD, then upload them back to your library, it converts them to MP3 format by default. And it does work. Pretty kewl, huh?
And here’s The Band -
