Microsoft Groove Music Shutting Down After Today. A couple of months ago, Microsoft announced that the Groove Music Service was going to be shut down at the end of 2017. Well its now the end of 2017. OK, for a little background, on an October 2nd Windows Blog post, the GM of Microsoft Groove announced that at the of 2017 that
Music Pass support in Groove and music purchase in the Windows Store to be discontinued; the Groove Music app will continue to support playback and music management of owned content.
If you are still reading this (and I hope you are), and are still wondering what this Groove Music thing is, here is the short version of what it is. Groove is just like Apple Music, or Spotify, or many of the other music streaming services that exist today. Groove started as the Zune Music Marketplace, back when Microsoft wanted to go head to head with Apple’s iPod. After the Zune service faltered and was discontinued, the service itself continued with the renaming to Xbox Music. After a couple of years of Xbox Music, the service was renamed again, just before the release of Windows 10 and became Microsoft Groove.
So Why Does Groove Shutting Down Matter To You?
There is one import situation that could matter to you. At any point, if you used the service and purchased an album or a song, today is the last day to download that music. After today, if you don’t download the purchased music, the music will be permanently lost.
If you log into the Microsoft Groove Music app or go to the groove website via any web browser, you will see a notice telling you
At this point, if you want to know if you have purchased music, just look under collections (web player) or My Music (music app) and you can see if anything is there. If you have music to download you can do the following.
Download Music From Groove
- From Windows 10
- Open the Groove app on your Windows 10 PC and select My Music.
- Select Filter > Purchased.
- Press and hold (or right-click) the item you want to download and select Download.
- Find your downloaded files in File Explorer at This PC > Music > Purchases.
- From iOS/Android
- Go to the Groove music site, sign in and select Collection > All music > Purchased music.
- Pick an item to download and select More > Download.
- Select Confirm download.
- You’ll get a notification asking what you want to do with your download. Select Save > Save as and pick a place to save it.
If it’s downloading correctly you will probably see a message like this
After December 31st, The Microsoft Groove Music player will continue to work, if you want to use it to play locally stored music. What is being shutdown and what you are losing is the ability to play streamed music and to play and keep purchased music that you don’t download locally.
NOTE: On a follow-up post, for those who no longer have a need for the Groove music player, we will list how you can uninstall it. It is possible to uninstall.
Source(s)
- Groove Shutdown Announcement – Windows Blog
- History of Groove Service – Wikipedia
- Groove Music Download Instructions – Windows Support
