RE: UPC CODE is probably involved ~ maybe not
I'm a musician I recorded my own album then used CDbaby.com to distribute it. In preparing to do so, I bought a UPC code from CDBaby. The upc code is simply a unique identifier for a product. In my case the UPC code for the CD points to cdbaby as the manufacturer, but also specifically references my CD. Not the individual songs, just the CD as a whole. So, it appears unlikely that the UPC is used by WMP to collect ID info about tunes, because there is no such info encoded in the UPC I have.