Microsoft kills off Groove Music Pass, and stops selling music.

[GoodBytes]

Microsoft announces that it is terminating its Music Subscription Service and also buying Music from the Store for good December 31st, 2017. Being the first music subscription service ever made under the Zune branding back in 2012, it aimed in revolutionizing the way we buy and listen to music. it failed to gain traction, and a later competitor managed to gain traction by being multi-platform, available in a wide range of countries, and bring aggressive marketing, not to mention free option. This competitor is Spotify. While eventually Microsoft caught up to Spotify many years later, its slow its slow paste and lack of bringing innovative features to the table, nor provide any competitive pricing options, it failed to capture the market. Under the XBox branding, it was the first subscription service to reach Canada. Spotify only came several years later. Groove Music was available on iOS, Android, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10, XBox One, and Web via any HTML5 compatible web browser.

 

 

Today, Microsoft announces all its subscribers that it is terminating the service, and helping them switch to Spotify.

You will no longer be able to buy msuic, or get the streaming service.

 

To help with the transition, Microsoft says that:

• Groove Music Pass subscribers will get 60 days free of Spotify Premium
• Microsoft will give a prorated refund to its subscribers if the subscription passes December 31st via the credit card used. If the credit card is no longer valid, Microsoft will return the funds in the form of a Microsoft Store prepaid card with 120% of the value it should be.  So if you should get 10$ back, you'll get a gift card of 12$.
• Playlists in Groove Music will be ported to Spotify.
• Purchased Music will still be playable.
• If you have unused Music Pass pre-paid card not redeemed. Microsoft will return 120% of the value in the form of Microsoft Store card that can be used online store or Microsoft physical store.
• Microsoft recommends to download and back up all purchased music as they will no longer be able to re-downlaod them after Dec 31st.
• Groove Music app and OneDrive integration will still work, supported and the app will continue to be updated. This includes the iOS and Android app.

 

 

In Microsoft statement:

Quote

What’s happening to the Groove Music Pass?

As of December 31, 2017, the Groove Music Pass streaming service will be discontinued and will no longer be available. The built-in Groove Music app will continue to play all the music you’ve purchased and downloaded or uploaded to OneDrive, but will no longer stream or play any Groove Music Pass content. 

[...]

I pre-paid for an annual Groove Music Pass. What are my options?

Your recurring annual Groove Music Pass will continue through December 31, 2017. If your Pass subscription extends beyond December 31, 2017, then by February 1, 2018, Microsoft will give you a prorated refund from December 31, 2017 onwards (if we are able to issue a refund to your credit card/payment instrument on file). If we are unable to refund your payment instrument on file, Microsoft will provide 120% of that prorated amount in a Microsoft gift card in your Microsoft account to spend at the Microsoft Store.

 

Source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4046109/groove-music-and-spotify-faq

 

[terrytek]

So what if you use Groove in Forza Horizon 3? How is that gonna work?

[Guest]

Reminds me when they killed my Zune music pass.

Sigh.

[PCGuy_5960]

I honestly didn't know that this Groove Music Pass existed.

[vanished]

I honestly had never heard of it or knew it existed until I got Windows 10.  Typical of them to totally fail to capture a market they could have been first into.  Sometimes it's failing to see it's there, and sometimes it's trying and never taking off, but this is just another of many failures...

[Zando_]

Yay! Does anyone willingly use Windows default software? Edge, meh, video player, meh, Groove music, meh, and etc and etc. I mean, most people just replace them with better software anyways. IMO, MS should just fix all the quirks in Windows instead of trying to make software someone already made a better version of. 

[vanished]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Yay! Does anyone willingly use Windows default software? Edge, meh, video player, meh, Groove music, meh, and etc and etc. I mean, most people just replace them with better software anyways. IMO, MS should just fix all the quirks in Windows instead of trying to make software someone already made a better version of. 

At the same time though, I think they feel like they need to offer a complete package and not just a barren OS, and I think a lot of non-tech savy users would feel the same, consciously or not.

[shermantanker]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Yay! Does anyone willingly use Windows default software? Edge, meh, video player, meh, Groove music, meh, and etc and etc. I mean, most people just replace them with better software anyways. IMO, MS should just fix all the quirks in Windows instead of trying to make software someone already made a better version of. 

I use the music player all the time. I just buy my crap in iTunes, and play with that. It is fast, clean, very lightweight, and runs super smooth compared to the dog iTunes is.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, shermantanker said:

I use the music player all the time. I just buy my crap in iTunes, and play with that. It is fast, clean, very lightweight, and runs super smooth compared to the dog iTunes is.

Hehe. My PC gets used for gaming an tinkering, listen to music on my phone and iPad. Though iTunes is a monster on windows. IMO, the best windows media player is Windows Media Player, but it can't play discs and stuff in Windows 10.

[The Benjamins]

11 minutes ago, terrytek said:

So what if you use Groove in Forza Horizon 3? How is that gonna work?

Ya I was thinking the same thing, I am hoping for Spotify integration.

[shermantanker]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Hehe. My PC gets used for gaming an tinkering, listen to music on my phone and iPad. Though iTunes is a monster on windows. IMO, the best windows media player is Windows Media Player, but it can't play discs and stuff in Windows 10.

for just music playback it works great. I keep my stuff saved in one-drive, and just tell it to look there for my library. The UI is very well done, and has a few nice features over WMP.

[Zando_]

Just now, shermantanker said:

for just music playback it works great. I keep my stuff saved in one-drive, and just tell it to look there for my library. The UI is very well done, and has a few nice features over WMP.

True. But it is Microsoft. I only use their software out of necessity. Though they did nail the UI of Windows 10, it's really nice and clean (and not garish like 8). Just need to make it act as nice as it looks. 

[GoodBytes]

Correction to my post:

Buying Music from the Store app will also disappear. You'll need to buy your music elsewhere.

 

I guess eBooks, TV & Video will be next.

[LAwLz]

Did Groove Music Pass have any appealing feature or selling-points?

If not, then nothing of value was lost. It always seemed like a strictly worse Spotify or Google Music to me.

[AlwaysFSX]

17 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

video player, meh

Video player has one feature that I either LOVE or absolutely despise depending on when I want it to work. And that's pausing the video when you tab to a different window.

 

Sometimes I want it to work depending on what I'm tabbing to, other times I want it to not trigger at all. But it does. Every single time..

 

I hate it.

[GoodBytes]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Did Groove Music Pass have any appealing feature or selling-points?

For a long time, it had way more music than Spotify. Now, in number, both matches more or less. But both focused on different music genres.

In addition, I am not sure if this has been fixed, but Spotify desktop player faced the issue with Chrome, where it prevented the CPU to go to sleep, killing laptop battery life when listening to music. It had interesting feature to help music discovery which Spotify took a page from.

 

Beside that, Groove Music, especially very recently, was or near was feature parity with Spotify. As for pricing they never managed to offer free music service, and have a family plan.

[vanished]

6 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

[...]

Beside that, Groove Music, especially very recently, was or near was feature parity with Spotify. As for pricing they never managed to offer free music service, and have a family plan.

That alone is probably what killed it.  You get market share by making it free, and not to mention some people will try it, like it, and then upgrade to a paid version.

[GoodBytes]

4 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Zune Music Pass + Zune desktop client + WP7 Zune app were amazing. Groove was a crap from the start.

Groove started real bad. But it got massively good recently.

[GoodBytes]

Forgot to mention, Groove Music subscribers will get 60 month free of Spotify Premium, and all playlists will ported to Spotify (assuming that Spotify have the music)

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Forgot to mention, Groove Music subscribers will get 60 month free of Spotify Premium, and all playlists will ported to Spotify (assuming that Spotify have the music)

60 months free!? 

[LAwLz]

15 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

For a long time, it had way more music than Spotify. Now, in number, both matches more or less. But both focused on different music genres.

In addition, I am not sure if this has been fixed, but Spotify desktop player faced the issue with Chrome, where it prevented the CPU to go to sleep, killing laptop battery life when listening to music. And has a Recommended for you system and "Radio" feature to help you explore music (picked music based on a select artist by looking through their bios, and influenced or was influenced by). But I guess Spotify develop its own ways to help make people discover music.

 

Beside that, Groove Music, especially very recently, was or near was feature parity with Spotify. As for pricing they never managed to offer free music service, and have a family plan.

So the short answer is no, it did not have any appealing feature or selling-points?

Nothing of value was lost.

[shermantanker]

28 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

True. But it is Microsoft. I only use their software out of necessity. Though they did nail the UI of Windows 10, it's really nice and clean (and not garish like 8). Just need to make it act as nice as it looks. 

very true, and I am digging the new fluent design standard. However I wish MS would go the apple rout and release it as 1 damn update, and not over 3 years lol. You know that they will have elements left over from 7 still mixed up with crap form 8, 8.1, and 10.xxxxx. They have issues with consistency. 

[vanished]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

So the short answer is no, it did not have any appealing feature or selling-points?

Nothing of value was lost.

Well, not quite.  Sounds like:

• In the early days Groove had better selection, and even today has a different selection (could be good depending who you are)
• Groove didn't mess with the PC's sleep and kill the battery

[Zando_]

Just now, shermantanker said:

very true, and I am digging the new fluent design standard. However I wish MS would go the apple rout and release it as 1 damn update, and not over 3 years lol. You know that they will have elements left over from still mixed up with crap form 8, 8.1, and 10.xxxxx. They have issues with consistency. 

Yes. Like Control Panel. They can't quite make up their mind to get rid of it, so they put half the settings in Settings, and the other half in CP. 

[Princess Luna]

Ew I have never touched this groove thingy, day one in a new windows 10 is set media player classic as default for every thing