Microsoft disables Windows Media Player metadate downloading for Windows 7 users

MSPowerUser reports Microsoft is disabling the ability of Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center on Windows 7 to download metadata from their servers. Windows 8 and Windows 10 users are not affected.

Microsoft writes:

Going forward, you may be unable to view information (metadata) such as the title, genre, and artist for songs, and the director, actors, cover art, and TV guide 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.

As you may know, Windows 7 will reach the end of its life on January 14th, 2020. After that date, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for this operating system. Windows 7 users are recommended to switch to a more modern operating system.