Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) 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 Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

, Windows 8.1,

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

and

Windows 11 Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...

. 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 Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...

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

, as well as Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. , 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 The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

base. Groove Music was superseded by Media Player in Windows 10 and Windows 11. The update was rolled out to Windows 10 users between January and June 2023.

History

Microsoft had previously ventured into music services with its Zune brand. The Zune 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, this move was intended to position

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

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 form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

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). Joe Belfiore 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 The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

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 List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

, displaying a

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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

would also be discontinued and cease functioning on December 1, 2018, with users being redirected to Google Play Music and

iTunes Match iCloud is the personal cloud service of Apple Inc. Launched on October 12, 2011, iCloud enables users to store and sync data across devices, including Apple Mail, Apple Calendar, Apple Photos, Apple Notes, contacts, settings, backups, and ...

for similar cloud synchronization functionality (the OneDrive app still offered limited music playback functions within). Microsoft began replacing the Groove Music app with a new

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

app in January 2022 via an update from the

; it initially applied to

, with

following suit in January 2023.

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 is a file-hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released as SkyDrive in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share, back-up and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage Frontend and backe ...

and accessed from multiple devices. Songs in a user's local library on a Windows 8.1 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 REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

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 * .flac * .aac * .m4a * .wav * .wma * .ac3 * .3gp * .3g2 * .amr * .mka * .ogg (on Windows 10 version 1903 and newer) * .opus (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 Universal Windows Platform apps Internet properties established 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 Products and services discontinued in 2023