Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music or Zune Music Pass) is a discontinued audio player software application included with

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

. The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming service, Groove Music Pass, which was supported across Windows, Xbox

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

, as well as Android and iOS. As of 2014, The Groove catalogue had over 50 million tracks. Its subscription service Groove Music Pass was officially discontinued on December 31, 2017, and the Android and iOS versions of the Groove Music app were discontinued in December 2018, restricting the player to its native

Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

base. Groove Music has been replaced by Media Player in Windows 11.

History

Microsoft had previously ventured into music services with its

Zune Zune is a discontinued line of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until its discontinuation in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, digital media player software for Windows Per ...

brand. The Zune Music Marketplace included 11 million tracks. The line of Zune players and Zune music store were somewhat unsuccessful, and the brand was largely discontinued at the beginning of the 2010s, although it continued to exist on different devices and the Zune Music Pass offered unlimited access to songs for US$9.99 per month. During its

E3 2012 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012 (E3 2012) was the 18th E3 held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It began on June 5, 2012, and ended on June 7, 2012, with 45,700 total attendees. It was ...

press conference, and in the wake of the upcoming release of

. Microsoft announced the relaunch of the service as Xbox Music. With the accompanying announcement of

Xbox Video Microsoft Movies & TV (US only), or Microsoft Films & TV (Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand), previously Xbox Video and Zune Video, is a digital video service developed by Microsoft that offers full HD movies and TV shows available ...

, this move was intended to position

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...

as the company's main entertainment brand. Both services launched on October 16, 2012. On July 6, 2015, Microsoft announced the re-branding of Xbox Music as Groove to tie in with the impending release of

. The new brand utilized the Microsoft-owned "Groove"

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from ot ...

formerly used for the unrelated product

Microsoft Office Groove Microsoft SharePoint Workspace (formerly Microsoft Office Groove) is a discontinued desktop application designed for document collaboration in teams with members who are regularly off-line or who do not share the same network security clearance. ...

(now

OneDrive for Business Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in August 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web vers ...

Joe Belfiore Joe Belfiore is an American business executive who has held various roles at Microsoft since August 1990, mostly in the field of user experience. He is currently the Corporate Vice President in the Experiences and Devices division of Microsoft. ...

explained that the re-branding was intended to disassociate the service from the Xbox product line, making it more inclusive to non-Xbox platforms. On October 2, 2017, Microsoft announced that its subscription service, Groove Music Pass, and music purchases on

Windows Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

would be discontinued after December 31, 2017, leaving support for playing music stored locally and on OneDrive. At the same time, Microsoft began advertising the competing service

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active use ...

, displaying a

banner ad A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking ...

for the service within the Groove Music user interface, and offering the ability to migrate music collections and playlists to Spotify. As a side effect of the discontinuation, on May 31, 2018, Microsoft additionally announced that the Groove Music apps for Android and iOS would also be discontinued and cease functioning on December 1, 2018, with users being redirected to

Google Play Music Google Play Music is a discontinued music and podcast streaming service and an online music locker operated by Google as part of its Google Play line of services. The service was announced on May 10, 2011; after a six-month, invitation-only be ...

and iTunes Match for similar cloud synchronization functionality (the OneDrive app still offered limited music playback functions within).

Groove Music Pass

Groove Music Pass (formerly ''Xbox Music Pass'' and ''Zune Music Pass'') is a discontinued pay subscription service that allowed unlimited streaming of the service's catalog on any device with the service installed. The pricing in the U.S. included monthly and annual subscriptions. A one-month trial offer was available, but those who previously tried the Zune Music Pass subscription prior to the rebranding were ineligible for this offer. An advertising-supported streaming tier was previously available, but discontinued effective December 1, 2014. Music could also be purchased directly from

. Users' purchased music, and playlists consisting of songs available on the service could be synced through

OneDrive Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in August 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web vers ...

and accessed from multiple devices. Songs in a user's local library on a

PC could be matched and made available to other devices if available on Groove Music Pass. Custom "radio stations" could be generated using songs related to user-selected songs. Songs could be downloaded for offline listening on smartphones. Uploading of non-Groove music became available on Windows 10. Windows 10's Anniversary Update allowed users to hide features that require a Groove Music Pass from the interface. On October 2, 2017, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of the Groove Music Pass service effective December 31, 2017. Existing subscribers were refunded, and Microsoft began promoting

as an alternative by allowing saved playlists to be migrated to the service.

Cloud Collection

Groove Music lets users create a collection of songs and playlists that roam through the cloud on all the supported devices. The songs can be added from the Groove Music Store or matched (within the Groove Music Catalog) to songs either saved locally on the user's machine or uploaded to the user's

account for the country the user is in.

APIs for developers

The Groove Music API provides access to RESTful web services for developers to leverage the catalog and features of the service in their application or website.

Geographical availability

Availability of Groove Music in the World

Countries where Groove was available included: * * * * * * * * * * * * * (Store only) * * * * * * * * * *

Supported formats

The app in Windows 10 supports a number of formats, including: *

.mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

.flac FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

.aac Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate. AAC has been stand ...

.m4a MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio, but it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, it allows streami ...

.wav Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Win ...

.wma Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Media Foundation framework ...

.ac3 Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3, is the name for what has now become a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Formerly named Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, the audio compression is lossy ...

.3gp 3GP (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones. 3G2 (3GPP2 ...

.3g2 3GP (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones. 3G2 (3GPP2 ...

.amr The Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR, AMR-NB or GSM-AMR) audio codec is an audio compression format optimized for speech coding. AMR speech codec consists of a multi-rate narrowband speech codec that encodes narrowband (200–3400 Hz) signals at va ...

.mka Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Adva ...

.ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality ...

(on Windows 10 version 1903 and newer) *

.opus Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough fo ...

(on Windows 10 version 1903 and newer)

References

External links

Official website
(Archive) {{Media player (application software) Microsoft cloud services Music streaming services Jukebox-style media players Online music database clients Digital audio

Groove Music Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music or Zune Music Pass) is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming service, Groov ...

Universal Windows Platform apps Computer-related introductions in 2012 Telecommunications-related introductions in 2012 Audiovisual introductions in 2012 Microsoft websites Microsoft software Windows media players Xbox Xbox One software Products and services discontinued in 2017 2012 software Zune