fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com service down forever

[German]Brief information for Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center users. The service required for these programs is down. It looks like Microsoft has shut down the servers.


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I found this information within the US Microsoft Answers forum on the entry fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com is down … and is likely to stay that way posted by a moderator. The post indicates that the service:

fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com

is down right now. He has then posted the following status page, which confirms the failure of the service. 

fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com status

The service is required by Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center to search for albums (title, cover, tracks etc.).


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Microsoft has shut down this service

In the Microsoft Answers forum post, the moderator points out that this is not a temporary problem, but that Microsoft has completely switched off this service. Microsoft has described it in KB4488539.

Changes in metadata service affecting Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player

Applies to: Windows Media Player Windows Media Windows 8.1  Windows 7

Going forward, you may be unable to view information (metadata) such as the title, genre, and artist for songs, and the director, actors, and cover art for movies in Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player. After looking at customer feedback and usage data, Microsoft decided to discontinue this service. This means that new metadata won't be updated on media players that are installed on your Windows device. However, any information that's already been downloaded will still be available. 

This change doesn't affect any major media player functionality such as playback, navigating collections, media streaming, and so forth. Only secondary features that require downloading of new metadata are potentially affected.

In short: Microsoft took a look at the user statistics and decided to switch off the metadata services for Windows Media Player and the Media Center. So users won't recognize it for old albums. But it is possible that information (metadata) such as title, genre, and artist for songs, as well as director, actor, and cover artwork for movies, cannot be displayed in Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player for new titles. Existing entries are preserved, but new information is no longer available. The following programs and Windows versions are affected. 

Program Windows Affected
Windows Media Center    
  Windows 8.1 Yes
  Windows 8 Yes
  Windows 7 Yes
Windows Media Player    
  Windows 10 No
  Windows 8.1 No
  Windows 8 No
  Windows 7 Yes

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6 Responses to fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com service down forever

  1. William Smart says:

    I for one find this very APPALLING. This was one really useful service. We all know support dates have been announced for Windows 7 & 8.1,so why didn't Microsoft let everybody(music lovers of all types)know exactly when the metadata service would be down for good?. FAIR warning would have been nice on their part,you know? At least we all would have had a chance to finalize our Windows Media Player libraries with proper info,artwork,etc. Maybe go out and buy some more C.D.'s while we could still rip(w/metadata) to our Music folder,devices. Bad enough the Zune software changed some time ago. The BIG question: What are they going to do, destroy that massive database? They "shot themselves in the foot" with this decision. REALLY!
    Why not maybe make it a "subscription" service on the next version of Windows?. Sorry if this seems like i am "dumping", but it has really been bothering me that they could do this to long time Windows users. Thanks>William

    p.s. The way this service was seamlessly "integrated" with ALL the good versions of WMP(9-12) was amazing!

  2. Mike says:

    Once again Microsoft shows how you can shoot yourself in the foot over and over again. A warning would have been nice. Thanks again for ruining Media player. Luckily there are alternatives out there.

  3. Antenor Morini Junior says:

    I realized why I went to update a folder with a collection of songs I created in another format. Using This service was very practical as it was very rich and reliable, so much so that my libraries always kept to replace information with what they had online. Strange, after investing mounting such a rich and complete file, it is thrown away. As much as it is underused, it does not seem to have a reasonable reason to disconnect data. Security risk? Cost of connection or available hardware is negligible … Happy is Microsoft who can afford to spend money fables and then deliberately spoils or kills a project …

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  5. Butin alain says:

    Essayer le logiciel gratuit " CDex " il est pas mal, mais moins convivial que windows média player.
    Il donne le nom de l'artiste, le numéros de piste, l'album, l'année, le titre mais pas la pochette. Dommage !

  6. Daniel Dreumont says:

    c'est inadmissible de supprimer se service sans prévenir il faut trouver une parade SVP car les données étaient trés utile

  7. Craig says:

    Its a shame there s not an alternative to Microsoft windows they got the monopoly and no competition they need to stop messing us around .

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