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

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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
    2014-11-27T19:36:15+00:00

    Hi Tim - thanks for the pointer...

    Since posting I have read through the whole thread more thoroughly and I saw the registry tweak, but concluded that as I rarely sit and stare at album art when playing music, I didn't really want to do anything to the registry.

    I suspect as I suggested in an earlier response this is an outdated setting from xp days or earlier that hasn't been upgraded for machines with greater memory/better screen res and the tiny square of artwork in the middle of the screen in wmp just looks a bit sad! Maybe a change for Windows 10??

    Cheers R

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-19T19:04:11+00:00

    Make the folder you keep your music in Read-Only. Make it not read-only when you want to add music, delete, etc.. That way WMP can't make Folder.jpg and AlbumArtSmall.jpg in the folder. Works for me.

    By the way sorry I'm late

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-19T19:44:03+00:00

    Interesting... I'll give that a go and report back. I'm not that fussed about it myself but I'm aware it's a cause if frustration for many users! - Thanks, R.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-10-01T03:30:01+00:00

    I'm seeing registry hacks, making files read-only, etc., but no actual *FIX* that disables this "feature" of WMP/WMC.  

    (I also see people posting things like "The read-only file trick won't work because I want to delete them. I don't want 11,500 extra files on my computer (600MB).  That's why I embedded the album art!" which makes me laugh, because the images being imbedded in the files takes up X*(N-1) more space (X being size of the image, N being number of tagged files) - possibly more, if the file then goes beyond the next cluster edge.)

    So why is there no fix?  As long as this has been going, you'd think Microsoft would have made it possible to disable this lovely "feature" of theirs... especially as there has been so many people complaining.

    Microsoft is disappointing me more and more.... 

    If anyone has an actual FIX, can you please actually post it?  I went through here, and none of the listed fixes work 100%.. .I *STILL* get the stupid albumart files created, *STILL* get the folder.jpg files, and once in a while, it even clears my custom tags IN the files!

    I need this turned off.... 

    Thank you! :)

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