Force windows media player to download album art

Windows Media Player is one of the most-used media players in the world, and in addition to playing videos and songs, it has some cool additional functions. One of them allows users to edit the information attached to music and other files.

Media information contains things like tags, artists, album info and more. You can edit aspects like titles, genres, track numbers, albums and more. In many cases, the info attached to the file will already be correct – for example if you download it from an official source or rip it from a DVD.

In the case of a YouTube download or privately shared file, you may find yourself needing to make some changes – here are the instructions on two ways to do so.

1. Find Album Info

To do this, you need to find the album that you are looking to update in the album view of your library. Right-click on the album in question and select the option Find Album Info. This matches the album title and artist with the online database that WMP is connected to. If information is available, it will be added to your songs. This includes the album cover image, additional artist and genre information and more.

1. Edit individual track

If the Album finder doesn’t work or your files aren’t part of an album at all, you’ll have to edit each of the tags and files individually instead. You can manually edit the info for each file, one at a time. It’s incredibly easy – first, hover over the details of any song you want to edit. Right-click on the aspect you want to change, be that title or artist or something else and click on Edit.

Tip: Should the information you want to edit not be visible easily in the overview, right-click on the menu bar and click on Choose Columns. Then, look for the element you want to edit and make sure to tick the box next to it. The relevant section will appear in the overview and you’ll be able to right-click and select Edit just like on the default aspects.