retrieve wma tag info

Hi I am trying to write a program that retrieves the song info
from a .wwa or .mp3 files. I have embedded the windows media player into my program, and have used the mediaplyayername.currentmedia.getiteminfo("artists") method to retrieve info. This works great, but only when the mediaplayer is playing. I need to know how to retrieve song name, artist name, album name, etc while the media player is stopped. I have seen the example program from msdn.com on reading wma info, but that program seems overyly complicated. I really wish I could get .getiteminfo to work while the player is stopped. please show me a simple way to retrieve .wma tags. thx.