Windows Media Player Album Database Offline

Question

It seems like Microsoft of whatever entity that handles the album database for Windows Media Player, either legacy or not, has taken their website offline. I know it changed in the past from being handled by Microsoft directly sometime in 2018, and the domain changed, specifically to "musicmatch-ssl.xboxlive". Because of this, when I put a music CD in my drive, it can't read any of the metadata, leading to albums with no artwork, no album info, and no track listing.

It appears this is a very new problem, as Dec 14, 2025 it was working fine, I ripped a CD and the album updated info automatically. Yesterday, Dec 15, 2025, not one CD, that I had not ripped before, showed up with any album information. And attempting to update the album info through the internet feature resulted in an error that a connection could not be established.

Why did this happen and is there a way to read the album metadata without this online album database? This next line is more rant but how is it that my car's stereo and my 15 year old CD player can read and display this information natively without an internet connection or need for a separate third-party program, but my my $1,500 computer cannot?

Answer 1

This seems like a widespread issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1pnn8qz/anyone_elses_media_player_having_trouble_updating/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5666756/when-playing-music-cds-all-of-the-artist-and-track?page=0&orderby=Helpful&translated=false#answers

Answer 2

Hello Ivan Ramos and everyone,

Thank you all so much for reporting this issue to the Q&A forum.

I understand you're facing an issue with Windows Media Player (both new and legacy) not being able to read CD metadata because the album database seems to be offline.

It seems that many people have recently also been running into this same problem where Windows Media Player can’t download album or media information.

At this time, Microsoft has not released any official documentation or announcements confirming the cause or offering a fix for this behavior.

Please keep in mind that this is a user‑to‑user community forum, so for now I strongly recommend submitting feedback through the Feedback Hub. This is the official channel that sends your report straight to Microsoft’s engineers for investigation. Additionally, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on upcoming Windows updates or Microsoft announcements, as adjustments may be included in future releases.

Thank you everyone again for your patience and for pointing this out!