I am completely over groove music!

[Captain_Eric]

Totally agree, Groove is garbage:
* when I tap shuffle it shows one song and plays another
* it randomly stops playing
* any command to play something via Cortana is taking forever and chances I will have to reboot the phone
* live tile is often stuck on one artist/song and not updating
* inconsistent menu appearance (sometimes NOW PLAYING is showing, sometimes it is not)

All I want to say is MSFT dropped the ball on this one and is consistently not picking it up. I left so much feedback about Groove, but nothing is being done.

I will be using my Lumia 1520 for another year probably, before it will be time to get a new phone, and although I used to love Windows, I will be looking in to Android options, because I am tired to compromise my experience. If within a year (and that is a lot of time), MSFT will not polish the OS to perfection, where every single small details is flawless, what is the point of having no apps and sub-par mobile phone?

I have a 1520.3 too, running production build 10586.318, but I don't have any of these problems. Maybe Groove somehow senses when someone is "tired" or thinks the app is "garbage" and goes passive-aggressive.

More seriously, reports in this thread are very uneven. It work fine, even well for me. Others have problems. (I wonder if they are just trolling. If they really were "done with Groove", why so much time spent here? Put it on Windows Feedback if you really want to help.)

Maybe we should disclose which Windows version, Groove version, and which device we are using to help pin his down... (unless you're a quiter, then adios) .

 

[TheArcaneFlame]

I have a L1520 and when I updated to the latest Insider Fast Ring release of Windows and the latest version of Groove, the app would no longer open. It would start to do so... then sit there for a while with a black screen before crashing. I had to hard reset my device in order to get the app to even launch. I had tried numerous restarts and soft resets with no improvement prior to the hard reset.

Prior to the app not opening, I experienced a lot of the same issues that others here have reported. Song not being playable, playback randomly stopping, Microsoft losing licensing rights to music making it unable to be streamed. It drives me crazy having to deal with all these issues just to try and listen to music on my devices. And don't even get my started on the loss of song ratings and smart playlists from the good old Zune days. I miss that so much.

Admittedly it's the Fast Ring... I get it. There will be issues at times. But this is core functionality of a music player that after years they still cannot seem to get right. It's so frustrating when music is a huge part of one's life. So I find myself more and more getting music from alternate sources. Yet even there we're kind of screwed because of a lack of apps. For example, Amazon Prime Music. I would totally use that on my phone if I could... but nope! (And how sad is it that if you try to browse to it in Edge it takes you to the Google Play store for their App??)

Sometimes it's really difficult to continue being a Microsoft supporter. It's hard to keep the big picture in mind when so many of these small things that could make your daily life easier and more enjoyable either don't work, are inconsistent or flat out get removed. I keep hoping that someday my perseverance will pay off but my optimism waxes and wanes more and more.

 

[ThatRecluse]

it's just another half brained release of an unfinished product by MS. honestly, I know people want to be loyal, and use the WP platform....as did I, and still do. Unfortunately there comes a time where you just have to see the platform for what it is. MS is not serious about the platform, nor its shortcomings, yet they want you to buy it. haha no. after 6 years of exclusively using WP as my daily driver, I say "no more". Amazon Music, and Zune is all I need. Of course, Zune is no longer supported, so on my iPhone (used to have an HTC M8 Win edition until last week) I use Amazon Music. ZERO issues. it's FREE, or it's 25 dollars a year, with 250,000 song upload, also available on all platforms. Sorry, MS.

 

[Captain_Eric]

it's just another half brained release of an unfinished product by MS. honestly, I know people want to be loyal, and use the WP platform....as did I, and still do. Unfortunately there comes a time where you just have to see the platform for what it is. MS is not serious about the platform, nor its shortcomings, yet they want you to buy it. haha no. after 6 years of exclusively using WP as my daily driver, I say "no more". Amazon Music, and Zune is all I need. Of course, Zune is no longer supported, so on my iPhone (used to have an HTC M8 Win edition until last week) I use Amazon Music. ZERO issues. it's FREE, or it's 25 dollars a year, with 250,000 song upload, also available on all platforms. Sorry, MS.

What Windows, Groove versions are you using, on what device?

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[sameersaab]

Grove Music is such a dumb name, it doesn't give it any distinct label as a Microsoft product, has zero brand recognition. This kind of stuff adds up, MSFT never knows how to market themselves and thats why they are in 3rd place. They could have went along with x-box music but just make it better.
Zune had the best interface and easiest to manage both on the phone and via dekstop. its a shame they moved backwards. Also zune was never marketed, it just sat around at best buy next to the infamous ipod. No matter how good the technology was, it was basically a joke since no one knew a thing about it.

 

[Demian Mioc]

I've discovered Loco Music Player, it's really nice looking one, has lots of different themes, and works good. I find it awesome for playing songs from folders on SD, something Groove still doesn't have. Also in app volume controls are great thing to have. Try it!

 

[dorelse]

Zune again? Zune is dead, chopped up into little pieces, packed in a barrel of acid, pushed off a wharf with lead weights in it....dead.

Groove name is great...the name is coupled with the logo lets you know instantly what it is...and you buy it from an app store that clearly identifies it as a MS app.

 

[Hermes Negruzzi]

Of course Groove is a joke. It's been almost a year and they haven't fixed that stupid shuffle algorithm that keeps playing songs very close to each other.
Microsoft, it takes 15 minutes TOPS to fix this stupid bug.
Even though I love my Lumia, the 0.7% market share is perfectly justified. Nothing seems to work properly on this OS, not even the OS itself.

 

[BrunelloMagni]

Of course Groove is a joke. It's been almost a year and they haven't fixed that stupid shuffle algorithm that keeps playing songs very close to each other.
Microsoft, it takes 15 minutes TOPS to fix this stupid bug.
Even though I love my Lumia, the 0.7% market share is perfectly justified. Nothing seems to work properly on this OS, not even the OS itself.

A year? It's been the same since WP8, their shuffle algorithm and their "no more than 1000 songs per playlist" haven't changed since then...

 

[davidbeatnik]

What are you all whining, eh... talking about?!? I used to be a total MacAddict, but I have fallen for Windows 10, Lumia 950 xl AND Groove, with its truly clean gui compared to iTunes' bloatedness...
I like Groove!

 

[anon(8145610)]

Agreed. Groove is crap. MixRadio worked perfectly - now it's gone.
Face it folks, Microsoft can't even get a decent music management system on their platform - much less anything else. Wonder why they're less than 1% of the market. Here's part of the answer.

 

[anon(8145610)]

iTunes was just overhauled.

 

[anon(8648115)]

The only thing for me about groove that's legit annoying is that, after the first five times of using it, it will NEVER stay on the 'now playing' screen when I re-open the app. It always crashes to the artist list. They said they fixed this well in the past and they never did, and it's still going on after all these overhaul updates. Annoying.

 

[BluetoothFairy1]

Groove does play locally stored songs on your SD. Just go to phone's settings, under storage settings choose to store music on SD card and in groove, at the very top, make sure to select to show FULL CATALOG - that will show all of your music - OneDrive, purchased and downloaded to your SD.

I have Groove music pass and don't have any rendering or syncing issues on my L640XL, apart from the app occasionally being slow, but otherwise it works great and syncs songs, playlists and other things between my phone and W10 laptop. What is bad about Groove is quality of some of their songs. I listen a lot to classical and some of usual staples are not even in Groove Library and some of their recordings sound like some did it in their garage on a 4-track and in mono. Just plain awful. The very same album in iTunes sounds pristine and in stereo.

The app works great for me on pre-preduction insider ring, so I guess the issue must be either your build or more likely your library.
If you think Groove is bad, try iTunes music - it is not much better in terms of bugs on my Mac. I stopped the membership after a while and kept Groove because I need music on the go and Apple did not bother making an iTunes UWP app... since rumor has it that they are looking into abandoning the music store and iTunes moniker altogether.

 

[BluetoothFairy1]

Agreed. Groove is crap. MixRadio worked perfectly - now it's gone.
Face it folks, Microsoft can't even get a decent music management system on their platform - much less anything else. Wonder why they're less than 1% of the market. Here's part of the answer.

+1

MixRadio was the reason why I jumped ship to WP8 and L521. It was such a great app, their library was pretty big and their human-curated playlists were superb. Even their algorithms introduced me to songs and bands I had never even heard of. What a great tool for music discovery.

Pity LINE killed it. Truly a pity.

 

[John Nestor]

Yamp, plays flac and has the only bluetooth capable eq ive found.

pardon grammar spelling...drunk : n lazy

 

[sikurunana]

Why is there no Genre?!!

I KNOW RIGHT! And why is there no Year? !!! >_<

 

[hemanlive]

in my country groove is not available.

Lucky You! Which country?

 

[hemanlive]

Agreed. Groove is crap. MixRadio worked perfectly - now it's gone.
Face it folks, Microsoft can't even get a decent music management system on their platform - much less anything else. Wonder why they're less than 1% of the market. Here's part of the answer.

they are not less than 1% because of groove music or mix radio. The picture is way too bigger than this. But yes, any blots don't help when people are not interested in looking at the picture in the first place. But we frustrated not because we don't think MS can do a good job with it. Zune was loved by so many users, the default music and videos hub in windows 8 and 8.1 was good. Even now they can easily scrap groove and launch either of those as those apps still exist. They can even buy back Mix radio from Line (which has decided to shut it down anyway) or any other such radio app and launch it again. Problem is that they are not listening to fans at all. They are just too busy and anyways phone is not a priority right now for MS

 

[Catholic Tech Geek]

If you are looking for a good media player that can play local files, I'm looking for some input to help improve my own music player. And before anyone asks, yes, I do use info from the audio tags in the music file. You can find it at https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...e-media-manager%2F9wzdncrfjwkc&token=u38Hv1je. I hope to have access to groove music api soon so I can play songs downloaded from groove music.