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
    2014-11-27T19:05:27+00:00

    It ends up 200x200 (or75x75 for thumbnails) which I assume is a default system setting...(if it can be altered please tell us someone!) and could not possibly be replaced by a download.

    See the registry tweak in JestaCat's post (on the first page here).

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-11-25T11:26:16+00:00

    Hi again

    Thought you might be interested...I did a bit of digging through hidden folders and came up with this - as you can see at bottom left, the folder contains 6000+ files (all 200x200) which pretty much equates to one for each music track in my library - you can also see in the screenshot a number of my own designs which have been reduced from their original size to the 200 default. WMP it seems is always going to set the artwork it displays to this (outdated) size. I have also noted that if you set artwork through iTunes and then play back on (eg) vlc the higher res image is displayed. Artwork from downloads is usually better res too (but not in wmp!)

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-11-23T17:22:52+00:00

    I'm not disagreeing with you regarding the low-res replacement. In some cases the art I am using is my own creation either for a compilation or for music that isn't on general release. It ends up 200x200 (or75x75 for thumbnails) which I assume is a default system setting...(if it can be altered please tell us someone!) and could not possibly be replaced by a download.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-11-23T17:13:52+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.

    What makes you think that WMP is resizing your larger-res image instead of overwriting it with a newly-downloaded 200x200 image?

    Whether it is downloading a new image or resizing an existing one, WMP is replacing a higher-resolution image with a low-res image.

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