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
    2010-01-14T18:43:00+00:00

    What a nice day to learn that my hours of hard work reconstructing my old Nina Simone album covers has been wasted!!! 1500 other albums w no problems... It crashed today also after the KillBit 01/10 and XP security patch; I sent the report.

    the other 1500 albums are on a portable 1tb wd drive; again no issue with this today (thankfully). The 'Simone' records were on my local drive. I was giving them a test run in WMP, and then bye bye covers...

    all options set appropriately

    xp + 4gb + PAE boot opt + office pro + wmp 11.0... + 250gb free hd

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-03-06T01:43:55+00:00

    I'd like to confirm richard_j_green's assertion that Windows Media Player 12 will overwrite existing album art stored as folder.jpg regardless of user preferences specifying otherwise. 

    With Retrieve Additional Information from the Internet set to **Unchecked,**and Update Music Files by Retrieving Media Info from the Internet set to Unchecked, Windows Media Player will still replace album art with low quality images downloaded from an online database.

    I would like to propose a solution which I have yet to test thoroughly - blocking the domain windowsmedia.com with either a firewall or router. If anyone has success with this please post back.

    Another solution - which I'm personally subscribing to - is replacing WMP with another media player, such as foobar2000 or songbird. I've had excellent results with foobar2000, although the initial configuration required may deter some potential users.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-04-12T16:16:31+00:00

    the above registry fix works.  you need to put it in before creating your library.  and read what i wrote.  the functionality is exactly what i said it was.

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