Prevent Windows Media Player Album Art Download

Anonymous
2009-12-02T13:24:14+00:00

I have spent a large amount of time fixingand manually editing my music album art with 500x500px images.

I have read the article at http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7music/thread/6ff8c9fd-d97f-4304-bad5-693f7dbb4532/ however this isn't my problem - I can add the artwork as I need.

The problem I have is that Windows Media Player is going online and replacing my 500x500px artwork with the 200x200px artwork from the online database. In addition to this, it is creating all of the 75x75px Small artwork files which are cluttering the My Music folder.

I have set Retrieve Additional Information from the Internet to No, and I have set Update Music Files by Retrieving Media Info from the Internet to No also, however it still goes online.

I used Wireshark to determine it is going to the following addresses:

redir.metaservices.windowsmedia.com.akadns.net

serviceswitching.metadata.windowsmedia.com.akadns.net

I have blocked these addresses on my router but WMP is finding a way around. I looked in the registry and there is nothing regarding totally disabling the artwork download (although this should be disabled with the options already set).

I can set the Folder.jpg files as Read-Only and this prevents WMP from overwriting my 500x500px files, but I still don't want it creating the AlbumArtSmall files.

Richard Green, MCSA Windows Server 2003

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2011-11-02T20:30:33+00:00

easy... just totally block windows media player using your firewall... or add those address as 127.0.0.1 (redir.metaservices.windowsmedia.com.akadns.net; serviceswitching.metadata.windowsmedia.com.akadns.net)

in the HOSTS file.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-11-23T16:01:55+00:00

    I have the same issue. Windows Media Player auto-downloads Album Art even when the boxes for "Update music files by retrieving media info from the Internet" and "Retrieve additional information from the internet" are unchecked. This overwrites higher-resolution Album Art that I have already downloaded.

    I use different programs for playing media files. Every time I get a new computer or reinstall Windows, Media Player shows the same behavior.

    I can always restore everything because I have a solid backup system, but my main response is to never use WMP.

    It would be great to see Microsoft finally address this - it's been an issue for a decade - but only a small percentage of users care, and those who care probably aren't using WMP anyway. Microsoft isn't losing customers over this.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-11-23T16:25:35+00:00

    Interested in your observation tr...I download my own chosen art and have no problem with wmp changing it (WMP 12 in Windows7) other than its annoying default of shrinking everything to 200x200 size - so it does seem a missed setting somewhere must be causing the trouble. Not sure we should be pursuing this on an old thread though! R.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-11-23T16:54:35+00:00

    I download my own chosen art and have no problem with wmp changing it (WMP 12 in Windows7) other than its annoying default of shrinking everything to 200x200 size - so it does seem a missed setting somewhere must be causing the trouble. Not sure we should be pursuing this on an old thread though!

    WMP is changing your album art, by overwriting your images with 200x200 images.

    I noted in my post (as others have previously noted as well) that WMP does this despite un-checking the boxes to download album art and info from the internet.

    I think the old thread is reasonable to continue because the problem has remained the same all these year.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-11-23T17:05:19+00:00

    My point is it is changing the size - it is not (in my case at least) downloading an image from the internet to replace my chosen one. I seem to remember that the album art displayed much better on my old xp desktop, but I suspect this was due to the screen res being lower...and I'm guessing that 200 size was set to minimize space use back when hard drives (and screen res) were a lot smaller.

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