Windows 10: Find Album Information in Windows Media Player Does Not Work

It was working before. Sometime after I got the Creators' Update it just stopped working.





Is there any way to fix it?

I have tried enabling and disabling Windows Media Player under "Turn Windows features on or off" and that did not work.

I know Groove Music does a good job with finding media information, but I do not want to use it yet since it does not have DLNA media server support for home networks.

:)

 

Windows Media Player 2013 (V 12.0.14393.1066)

Windows Media Player 2013 (V 12.0.14393.1066) that comes with Windows 10 is some of the worst, most bug ridden software I have ever had the misfortune to use.



The album information database software is seriously flawed:-



Attempting to paste album art does not work as it should: Sometimes it has no effect.
In this case, closing and re-opening Media Player often allows the paste to work.



When pasting album art, sometimes a pop up window appears with the message ‘Album art can't be changed when a song from the album is in use. Please try again later.’ This often happens even when no song is in use. Usually in this case, the paste does actually
take place despite the error message.



Sometimes pasting album art affects not only the currently selected album but other albums that have previously had the album art modified.

Bizarrely, Media Player on my PC now displays the cover art from one of my updated albums instead of the ‘Clef’ icon for the ’Unknown’ section in the ‘Album’ view. I did not update the icon and can find no way to revert it back.



One of the worst aspects of the database is that I spent hours using ‘find album info’ to enter album information for tracks that could not be found automatically. These tracks appear under the ‘Unknown’ album section. In cases where the track or album could
not be found, I entered the required text (title, artist, genre) by hand. Some time later, Media Player then took it upon itself to undo most of my changes and move tracks I had carefully assigned to albums back into the ‘Unknown’ album section! This is ridiculous.

Windows Media Player has been around for a long time. Why is it still so bug ridden? As it stands, the album database software is unfit for purpose. Is there something better?

 

Musci ID tags lost when transferring...

Hello Tito,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

Did you try opening the music/file with any other music player?

Try the following steps if the Album cover is missing in Windows Media Player

There are two ways where Windows Media Player stores the album art.

a. From the online database

b. Your choice which will be done manually.

The Player downloads album art from an online database where the information is supplied by a variety of non-Microsoft data providers.

The Player downloads album art when you rip a CD. To do so, the Player attempts to match the CD to an entry in the online database. If it finds a match, the Player automatically downloads the media information that is available for the CD, including album
art. In addition, the Player periodically scans your library for songs that are missing album art. If it can match a song that is missing album art to an entry in the online database, the Player will download the missing album art.

To resolve this problem, clear the Windows Media Player database. To do this, follow these steps:

a) Exit Windows Media Player.

b) Press Windows key + R, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK.

c) Select all the files in the folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.

Note You do not have to delete the folders that are in this folder.

d) Restart Windows Media Player.

Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.

If this does not resolve the problem, clear the Windows Media Player database cache files. To do this, follow these steps:

a) Exit Windows Media Player.

b) Press Windows key + R, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft, and then click OK.

c) Select the Media Player folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.

d) Restart Windows Media Player.

Hope this will help you. Keep us posted with the status of the issue. We’ll be glad to assist if you need further assistance.

Thank you.

 

I have the Creators Update. I don't use the media player much, but I've just tested it and successfully found album information. Interestingly, the address it shows is not the one shown in your screenshot.





I have found a number of relevant threads showing this problem which may be of help, some dating back to 2010 like this one...
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...7-283e2e6d4222

or this more recent Win7 one from 2016. The solution in this case was that the redir.metaservices... address was blocked by the HOST table. Nine people said this solved their problem.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...c-21eddca2b8d1

 

Just checked my hosts file and it was there. That exact same thing happened to me actually.
Thank you, I fixed it! *Biggrin

 

*Thumbs
Glad to have helped.