why can WMP receive CD metadata but foobar2000/dbpoweramp can't? Options

[bigidiot]

Here's a question that's been bugging me.

I use foobar2000 and the paid version of dbpoweramp to rip CDs. Both are outstanding.

But there are cases when a CD I put into my laptop receives no metadata from freedb or musicbrainz but windows media player can detect metadata easily. What's the deal?

I realize that WMP is relying on the proprietary DB Grace Note CDDB (and possibly others), but why would commercial rippers like dbpoweramp not buy a license to access CDDB? (Are the licenses really that expensive, or is it an ideological issue for them? )

I read online that winamp uses CDDB -- can anyone confirm this?

For 90% of what I rip, dbpoweramp is great, but I rip a lot of not-Western CDs.

Finally are there any plugins that might help with this process?

Fortunately, a lot of the metadata is just a google away, but it can become very tedious for that occasional CD that requires manual inputting of metadata....