Last Updated on October 12, 2021 by Mathew Diekhake

Microsoft has decided to discontinue the development and support of Groove Music on all mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, and Windows 10 Mobile.

The discontinuation of Groove Music comes amid the news of Microsoft partnering up with Spotify to offer its Groove Music Pass subscribers an easy way to transfer all music playlists to another platform. There is no word, however, of Microsoft yet buying Spotify, though one would assume Microsoft has at least tried to acquire what is the largest music streaming service in the world since they have decided to close down their own.

The move is frustrating if you’re a Windows user. It seems all too often these days you take the time to get to know a service Microsoft offers, only for it to be discontinued not long after. Going forward, it may be a good idea to start learning from these past experiences and only sign up for services you know are popular.

Even sadder yet, there were people who had Groove Music subscriptions who will now be in a panic as they try to work out how to get their monies worth of streaming. If you are one of those people, don’t worry too much . . . Microsoft will definitely make it as simple as possible to make sure you still have a viable subscription or get your money back, whichever they choose to do.

It was only two years ago that Microsoft rebranded Xbox Music to Groove Music. And since this was a Microsoft owned streaming service, you would be forgiven for assuming the name — and service — would be staying around for a long time to come, particularly with music being such a popular thing to listen to.

The Groove Music app will still be available to use on desktop computers. If you’re already familiar with Groove, we recommend checking it out. Though, if you haven’t used it much, as we said before, it may be wiser to leave it and get to know something else just in case Microsoft decides to remove it from all platforms entirely, which is probably the most likely thing to happen next.

For what it’s worth, we’ve been using the desktop version of Groove Music for several years now, and we found it very pleasant to use: things were straightforward, you could easily upload your music from File Explorer, the interface was very modern and showed you the artist’s album covers, and so on.

Microsoft has set up an FAQ page that goes into all the details regarding what Groove Music subscribers can do and exactly what the partnership with Spotify entails. You can read more about that here: Groove Music and Spotify: FAQ

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