Microsoft screws up again!

[PabloMack]

Months ago I had recorded my computer's fan noise and massaged the sound to make a background noise for the Terragen 2 animation I posted on YouTube. This was an animation of a scene that Oshyan did for benchmarking. Just now I looked at the sound file I had produced (which is an mpg) and, what do you know, Windows went out and found that my sound file is track #12 from the album "Dr. Crankenstein: Officially Sanctioned SPL Competition Disc" and that it has a Rap & Hip-Hop genre and the publisher is Newton Records! It even put the album cover as the icon on a file that I recorded myself. I have never heard of this album. Now what is Microsoft doing snooping around in my computer across the network and giving credit for my work to someone else I've never even heard of? What else are they doing with the information on my system, AND YOURS?

[Kadri]

This is strange really!

PabloMack , do you use Windows media player?. Windows 7 ?
There are some default settings i do not like.
I did change them immediately . Did you look at the Privacy (my Windows is not in English ) tab ?
There are some boxes they say something like : Get the media info of the music files and update them.
You should look at the other settings like library(?) etc. too.

But this shouldn't happen at the first place really

[jaf]

This seems a lot like false positives from a virus program, but I agree it's a bit disconcerting.  I wouldn't completely blame Microsoft -- it's the pressure from the music companies to get every dime they can.

[PabloMack]

PabloMack , do you use Windows media player?. Windows 7 ?
Did you look at the Privacy (my Windows is not in English ) tab ?

Yes I do use Windows media player but not the playlist thing any more. And Yes, I am using Windows 7/64 Home Premium. I used to use WMP on XP buts it is too difficult to figure out and they keep changing it. I do remember something about the automatic updating of album information. That is almost certainly why it happened but how is the big question.

[PabloMack]

This seems a lot like false positives from a virus program, but I agree it's a bit disconcerting.  I wouldn't completely blame Microsoft -- it's the pressure from the music companies to get every dime they can.

True. If Microsoft is really stealing our most valuable files, they wouldn't leave any indication in the user interface that they are doing so.

[Henry Blewer]

If you use Window Media Player, there is a tagging feature. That found the other file. You can turn this feature off. I would not worry about Microsoft snooping. Think about what your anti-virus might know.

Honestly I would not worry. They are after people re-distributing copyrighted material. Personal, private use is not a real concern. I usually end up buying music I like eventually after I play it from YouTube. I found some Buckethead I had not heard the other day.

[PabloMack]

If you use Window Media Player, there is a tagging feature. That found the other file. You can turn this feature off.

I found several things and I turned them off. One of these was to report listening stats to Microsoft. I guess they now think
that I like Rap and Hip-Hop.

[ajcgi]

Those same settings screwed up a load of my legit mp3s, where songs in albums would suddenly have their ID3 tag updated with extra characters midway through the album name. Suddenly my albums were split in two. Finally I turned that setting off, ran the mp3s through a tag program and sorted it out.

[plugsnpixels]

I've seen iTunes on the Mac do this too. It goes out and searches for song data so it can auto-name the tracks and I guess our file's size and length is similar to something else already in the database.