Prevent Windows Media Player Album Art Download

Tim - All of my folders have art that I have added but I name the art the same as my folder, example I have a folder for the album named 101 Strings-Lost Horizon for the album I have either a JPG or PNG file with the same name. WMP does not use the file unless I rename it to Folder.jpg. I could name it as such but I'm being ****. I may rename all of the art but with almost 3000 albums this is a lot of work, however I have not been pleased with the WMP replacements I've tested so far.

I'm having this same issue.

Even tried blocking WMP from windows firewall but somehow its still updating with album art.

I don't want ANY album art at all as i'm using sugar sync and it's going ahead and backing up all the hidden albumart files also which is a real pain.

I give up, will try out winamp again, havnt used that player in about 10 years.

Has anyone ever figured out the definitive set of fixes for this? I use WMP simply because I play music via my XBox 360 extender. However, I don't want WMP to actually touch the music at all (for organising the music, I use MediaMonkey), Yet even with the aforementioned URLs blocked(*), it will still download album art.

P.

(*) 127.0.0.1     redir.metaservices.windowsmedia.com.akadns.net

127.0.0.1    serviceswitching.metadata.windowsmedia.com.akadns.net

Oceanclub: have you tried the registry tweak explained in JestaCat's post (on the first page)?

I'm having this same issue.

Even tried blocking WMP from windows firewall but somehow its still updating with album art.

I don't want ANY album art at all as i'm using sugar sync and it's going ahead and backing up all the hidden albumart files also which is a real pain.

I give up, will try out winamp again, havnt used that player in about 10 years.

I'm having the same extremely annoying problem, I like most of WMP12 but the image folder beeing changed all the time is very bad news. I spent thousands of hours trough the years building my music library and I recorded my own vinyl LPs. So now with the WMP12 it changes all my pictures to their own and sometimes a 1950 original albunm art is replaced by some year 2000's CD compilations of old albums.

I wish that Microsoft could put a check Box that would prevent the image replacing.

I tried everything and nothing really works. The only solution so far is to stop using WMP12 definitely.

And change for any other music player. Even some old ones like Musicmatch , Win Amp, VLC what ever .

Apart from doing this very annoying change of pictures in the music folders WMP12 is verygood.

I unchecked all internet connections with Media player and it does not solve the issue.

I Blocked WMP from accessing Internet, it does not solve the issue, I blocked WMP with Webrooy antivirus's Firewall and it does not stop WMP , I tried all of the following and it does not stop.

READ this it helps a little:

 Click on the orbit [Start Button] or press CTRL + R and type services.msc

This will open the Services MMC Console , Now in the list of services search for

Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service right click and click on STOP .

Or from elevated Command prompt type the following to stop the service

Net Stop WMPNetworkSvc

Press enter

I deleted my lbraary first, deleted all the WMP12 image files hidden  by doing th:is:

Click My Computor than go C/user/Name of the user/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Media Player/ArtCAche and/or

AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Art Cache\LocalMLS

Than You reopen WMP with no files of music in it and create a new library from your C/My Music file

All folders must have a new picture file renamed Folder.jpg and the spelling and character case has to be exactly like this.

Hope it helps anyone.

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