Windows Media Player’s ‘find album information’ functionality has been removed — you’ll have to find other software for playing and ripping CDs with relevant track information

Microsoft has quietly removed ‘find album information’ and ‘update album info online’ tools from the Media Player apps supplied with Windows 11. We checked both Windows Media Player Legacy, and the latest Media Player app, and neither could connect to retrieve album artwork, track names, and other useful data like genre/composer, when an audio CD was popped in to play. Several music CDs were tried.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

It might be understandable that Microsoft let this feature wither away from Windows Media Player Legacy – as it is a legacy tool. The removal of this feature in the Legacy app was confirmed by The Register earlier this week. Microsoft PR didn’t respond to that site’s queries about whether the service has been retired intentionally.

When we tested the Legacy app with a few audio CDs, we observed that musicmatch-ssl.xboxlive.com wasn’t reachable by the ‘Find Album Information’ service that is built-in.

Our efforts shifted to the new Media Player app that is the default tool for consuming video and audio, as well as handling playlists, on the latest Windows 11 packing PCs. Sadly, this app suffered from a very similar issue. The error message when I tried to update album info online read, “We couldn’t connect to the service. Check your internet connection, then try again.” There was no issue with my internet connection.

Alternative CD audio media players and rippers are available, but it is a shame those built-into the latest Windows OS distributions have been neutered in this way.

Not many computers ship with optical drives nowadays. We have reported on just a handful of PC releases in 2025 which involved optical drive hardware, ready to handle media like Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs.

Some movie, music, and computer enthusiasts are still very fond of their optical media. Even though we are firmly in the ‘age of streaming,’ movie and music aficionados still prefer physical media due to the quality they offer, and the shifting-sands upon which streaming providers like Netflix, Amazon Prime Movies, Spotify, and others, build their offerings.

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