Groove and Surface pro 4

[gbafam]

So, I've loaded some music onto my new surface pro 4. There is, apparently, no native music app on the 4 like there was with the 3 (not a major loss; it was very limited). I get a message asking if I want to use "groove" which I confess I've never heard of. Some Bing research reveals that Groove is now MS's music player. But having just spent a great deal of time tuning up my genre identifications I was alarmed to see complaints that Groove overwrites those edited genre identifiers. And I further learned that Groove is pretty limited as well, and you can't edit genre using that program.

So do I dare use it? Do I download itunes (which I'm trying to avoid)? Some other media player program that works with the SP4 and windows 10? Some other program that allows for editing meta data?

It's always surprised me that MS doesn't have a fully functional music player; that was an issue with the surface pro 3 and is also an issue with the surface pro 4, apparently.

 

[John M Beauchemin]

It's always surprised me that MS doesn't have a fully functional music player; that was an issue with the surface pro 3 and is also an issue with the surface pro 4, apparently.

Groove is MS's music player.

The future of digital music collections is the same as the future of movie and TV media collections, book collections, any consumable media. Automagically Scraping metadata from online databases, filling missing information, album and artist art, etc. If you want something that is just a player, why don't you just use VLC?

Personally, I use Music|Mode. I gave Groove a shot and thought it was kind of 'eh'. Music|Mode has a much nicer interface.

I've been iTunes free for a year now, and I will never, ever install iTunes on a PC ever again.

 

[RTGent]

Groove is working fine on my upgraded SP2, but this version is limited -no Playlists nor Now Playing on the menu. I'd say still limited, but I saw Now Playing in a video of an earlier ( I presume) build? or version. Music|Mode screenshots look good/promising with hints of Zune, but not really. I hope to see a video showing it off soon. Also, reading the website, including the very helpful developer's blog, it sounds even less-ready, operationally, than Groove.

It's still SO early, though, for all things W10. Whatever I use will have to work well with my Groove Music Pass, my soon-to-be W10 phone, and ideally (in my dreams) my Zune players. Meanwhile, I'm having fun learning, and look forward to great new devices.