Several people have reported this frustrating problem to us… they insert their copy of our cd “Standards” into their PC, and for some crazy reason Windows Media Player displays the info and album artwork for Neck’s “Here’s Mud in Yer Eye.” What gives??

The problem lies with the Windows Media Database, which looks up information for a CD based on its unique “fingerprint” and largely relies on user input.

Many people seem unaware that you can correct this information yourself and even add the correct album artwork. I’ve uploaded the cover artwork here for just that purpose (click the image above for the full-size version).

So how did this happen? The fact that it is another Irish rock band seems too coincidental to me. My going theory right now is that someone who possessed both CDs unwittingly entered Neck’s info for ours. And for some reason this mistake has persisted in Microsoft’s database despite the fact that the two CDs don’t even have the same number of tracks (Neck’s has 13, ours has 10).

If more people take the time to enter the correct information, this problem should eventually go away. All our PC-savvy friends out there, we’re calling on YOU!

According to Microsoft’s instructions on how to add or edit media information in Windows Media Player, there is a “lag time, perhaps days” between when you submit new data and when that data becomes active in their database. All the different entries people may be entering for “Standards” will have to be reconciled and verified first.

UPDATE: Incidentally, iTunes and WinAmp correctly identify “Standards”… except they attribute it to “Blag’ard” instead of Blaggards. Both these services use the Gracenote (CDDB) database, which also relies on user input. So we could use your help getting this corrected as well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Services that use the “freedb” database should have the correct information. (If you don’t know what freedb is, don’t worry about it.)