Microsoft is celebrating the resurgence of interest in physical media in the only way it knows how… by halting the Windows Media Player metadata service.

Readers of a certain vintage will remember inserting a CD into their PC and watching Windows Media Player populate with track listings and album artwork. No more. Sometime before Christmas, the metadata servers stopped working and on Windows 10 or 11, the result is the same: album not found.

We tried this out at Vulture Central on some sacrificial Windows devices that had media drives and can confirm that a variety of compact discs were met with stony indifference. Some 90s cheese that was successfully ripped (for personal use, of course) decades ago? No longer recognized. A reissue of something achingly hip? Also not recognized.

Windows Media Player - guess the album - Click to enlarge

We asked Microsoft if the service had indeed been retired or if there might be a reprieve or workaround, but we were met with equal indifference from the tech giant's PR organ.

A message on a Reddit forum purporting to be a chat with a Microsoft support representative suggested that the servers have indeed been shut down, and that a third-party alternative should be sourced.

Alternatively, customers can manually enter the information, like it's the 1990s all over again.

The timing is unfortunate. Tired of content vanishing from streaming services or disappearing into algorithmic feeds, consumers are returning to physical media like CDs.

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Physical media drives have yet to completely disappear from Windows devices, but the default service used by Windows Media Player for album information, musicmatch-ssl.xboxlive.com, does not appear to serve up any metadata.

Windows Media Player has a long history with Windows. First released as part of the Multimedia Extensions for Windows 3.0, it evolved over the years, gaining support for streaming, ripping, and burning CDs. It survived Microsoft's Zune experiment and remains in Windows 11 - though now branded "Legacy" as Microsoft pushes users toward its modern Media Player app.

Microsoft does not share its device telemetry, but it clearly concluded too few users still play CDs to justify maintaining the metadata services.

Apple's iTunes, on the other hand, recognized every CD we threw at it. ®