Unfortunately, from what I have seen, there are not any free conversion utilities for that format... and since you're already buying the music (or you get a free song from Pepsi), why pay for a program to let you play it on something other than iTunes or QuickTime's player? WinAmp can play it now thanks to AMIP.
Now that someone pointed it out, I think they are right in that splay will play whatever Media Player supports. Or is that incorrect? If it's correct, then what we really need if we want to play music in mIRC is a codec for Media Player.
As for my preference for music in mIRC... I am in mIRC all the time and it is easier to do things from there rather than switching between many apps. I made my own playlist script which works with all the major playlist formats (media player, winamp, etc) and converts between them so I can use the playlist on those apps if I felt like it. I like using that rather than the other apps for playlist work as well. Just my preference, I guess.
