Cortana and music: the command list

[fdruid]

I want you to help me compile a list of the music-related commands for Cortana.
I use this feature a lot, but sometimes I'm not 100% certain of how it works.

-For example, lately I've nailed the use of asking Cortana to "Play random music", which gets her to reply "Shuffling your music" and plays random songs from my library.

-I think that "Play my music" plays all the songs from the library in alphabetical order, and then "Shuffle" supposedly enqueues a randomized list of all the songs. I haven't been able to get a consistent use of these two commands though.

-To play an album it's enough with saying "Play <album name>". Sometimes with saying "Play <album name> by <artist name>" it works too but I've yet to scientifically test this.

-Also you can play songs from a specific artist saying "Play <artist name>", which I think plays that artist's albums in sequence, as they appear in the artist list. I need confirmation for this too.

What I haven't been able to do, and I think Cortana can do, is to ask her the name of the song that the phone is currently playing. Not which song is playing outside the phone, like Shazam, but just tell me the name of the song. And maybe artist too. I think this should be useful, if it's not implemented already and I just can't get it to work.

What else can Cortana do with your music? How do you use it?

 

[jojoe42]

I want you to help me compile a list of the music-related commands for Cortana.
I use this feature a lot, but sometimes I'm not 100% certain of how it works.

-For example, lately I've nailed the use of asking Cortana to "Play random music", which gets her to reply "Shuffling your music" and plays random songs from my library.

-I think that "Play my music" plays all the songs from the library in alphabetical order, and then "Shuffle" supposedly enqueues a randomized list of all the songs. I haven't been able to get a consistent use of these two commands though.

-To play an album it's enough with saying "Play <album name>". Sometimes with saying "Play <album name> by <artist name>" it works too but I've yet to scientifically test this.

-Also you can play songs from a specific artist saying "Play <artist name>", which I think plays that artist's albums in sequence, as they appear in the artist list. I need confirmation for this too.

What I haven't been able to do, and I think Cortana can do, is to ask her the name of the song that the phone is currently playing. Not which song is playing outside the phone, like Shazam, but just tell me the name of the song. And maybe artist too. I think this should be useful, if it's not implemented already and I just can't get it to work.

What else can Cortana do with your music? How do you use it?

• I've used the music-identification feature ("what's playing Cortana?") and it works pretty well actually
• You can also play music by genre ("play some jazz" or "put on some classical music")
• I find I can be quite casual about playing artists or albums ("play some Coldplay" or "put on This Is It")
• Playing playlists also works "play my running playlist")

 

[Tiaxx]

So far I've found working:

• play music
• stop music
• shuffle songs
• next track, skip track
• previous track, last track
• play (some) <artist>, play <song/genre/playlist>, etc.

 

[fdruid]

• I've used the music-identification feature ("what's playing Cortana?") and it works pretty well actually
• You can also play music by genre ("play some jazz" or "put on some classical music")
• I find I can be quite casual about playing artists or albums ("play some Coldplay" or "put on This Is It")
• Playing playlists also works "play my running playlist")

Great list!
The times I've actively tried to ask "what's playing" it seems to go into the "audio recognition" mode. You can tell because it takes a bit for Cortana to reply. I thought that it would just say the information from the song file's information tag.

I didn't know Cortana could play music by genre. Again, this relies on the music's tags. I'll try it.

 

[fdruid]

Hey, I've been using these extensively, but I can't figure out how to UNSHUFFLE music play, any idea? That is, leave random play order.

Also, can one search Store artists and songs and play them using Cortana (if you're an Xbox Music Live subscriptor, that is)?

 

[dandrayan]

Cortana misunderstood my command to send my girlfriend a text this week while driving home and instead queued up more music to my playlist ("Queueing up <artist name here>"). I haven't been able to figure out how to reproduce this though! Has anybody figured out how to queue music up intentionally?

 

[OwenDL]

I don't think there's a command for turning shuffle off. I've tried 'Turn shuffle off', 'Stop shuffling my music', and some other and she won't turn it off. It'd be handy if someone found the right one, though!

 

[fdruid]

I don't think there's a command for turning shuffle off. I've tried 'Turn shuffle off', 'Stop shuffling my music', and some other and she won't turn it off. It'd be handy if someone found the right one, though!

I have a theory I have yet to test, which is that commands which include SHUFFLE and RANDOM activate the shuffle, and saying PLAY something plays it in order.

Cortana misunderstood my command to send my girlfriend a text this week while driving home and instead queued up more music to my playlist ("Queueing up <artist name here>"). I haven't been able to figure out how to reproduce this though! Has anybody figured out how to queue music up intentionally?

This is also relevant, the fact that Cortana uses the word QUEUE to acknowledge you're asking her to play in a random order. I don't think there's a lot more words that I can come up with for this than SHUFFLE and using the word RANDOM.

This is all unscientific, I usually do this while driving and to be honest I've just discovered that I needed to turn my phone upside down on the cup holder for Cortana to better understand me without yelling like crazy

 

[MaximilianPS]

"Play random music" in Italian didn't work, I've tried with different translations but nothing works.
Still ***** like a sheep, "Play something" would be so natural and unser-friendly... but at Microsoft, those still unheard words :eck:

 

[lord_quick]

"Play random music" in Italian didn't work, I've tried with different translations but nothing works.
Still ***** like a sheep, "Play something" would be so natural and unser-friendly... but at Microsoft, those still unheard words :eck:

Actually all of theese work in english, you can say that and she will play random music.

 

[Drew Neilson]

I didn't know Cortana could play music by genre. Again, this relies on the music's tags. I'll try it.

I know that this thread is old but I wanted to post the following note here for anyone who, like me, found this page while searching for information on Cortana and Groove. It seems to me that the genre you speak has to be one that you can see in Groove's radio section. I tried asking Cortana to "play music genre funk" and it didn't work, because "funk" isn't listed as a genre in the radio section. "Dance" is, so that worked. There is a single station for R&B and soul, so I don't know what will happen if you ask Cortana to "play music genre soul" instead of "play music genre R&B soul". I'll try it and post an update.