It's now "2018" with music gone from the MSFT Store how are buying your music?

[MarineDawg]

Amazon today, Amazon tomorrow, Amazon forever... I lost the ability to rip CDs at home anyway and to rip at work, upload to OneDrive, download at home is too cumbersome with the frequency of my purchases. I am not an audiofile so I don't sense any missing fidelity going all digital which is also the format used in the car.

 

[lbp775]

Stopped buy music since Groove Music Pass. Now that it's gone I'm forced into Spotify which is greatly inferior even on Android. I'm on a trial period for Google Play Music and I'm starting to think that it's the closest thing to what we had with Groove. Other than the ability to stream and download music, you can also access your personal owned collection from Google Drive. Although I haven't gotten around to syncing my music yet. Other than Outlook mail and Office360, I'm almost off of all Microsoft services.

 

[mwright53]

I don't. I would hear a song I liked and use Cortana to tell me the name. Then I would buy the song through the store. All that is gone now.

 

[mklwrmrdm]

Not at all, back to soundcloud and youtube. The only music I would buy would be on a CD, but I haven't had a device for like 8 years which can play a CD

 

[AbsoluteZerow]

I use Spotify.

 

[maverickreloaded]

I'll buy CDs from Amazon. Most of them come with a free MP3 download that gets added to my library automatically

 

[Brett McMicken]

bought a song Saturday from the Google play store. took about an hour before i could play it and had to download it on pc today. i miss the simplicity of downloading it through Microsoft

 

[cmattau90]

I only use Groove to play my music. I have ripped all my old CDs and saved them to OneDrive, and I buy all new music through Amazon; anything from them is available via Amazon Music. Both Groove and Amazon Music are available on my iPhone.

So, basically nothing has changed for me.

 

[IdleMind]

I haven't found a one stop shop yet. Also as I've discovered since Groove ended, the music search function of Soundhound is horrible. So now I can't search a song that I'm hearing anymore. I buy CD's or MP3's from Amazon and add to my Zune library. I stream iHeart radio on my HK Invoke, Xbox, and sometimes PC. I use my Zune HD in one of my cars, and USB drive that I sync with MediaMonkey in the other car. I still use Zune mostly to manage my music and MediaMonkey to add album art to the MP3 tag when needed since I still do buy physical CD's and rip them. Even with it's flaws I do believe that MS had one of the better music services. The main reason I use Zune at home is because I like the graphic effects when listening to music. Oh, one other thing that I think Zune did really well was create really good playlists when using the Music DJ. The other services play the same songs when I want it to pick music for me related to a particular artist. Zune would always mix it up really well and present new artists that I may not have heard of yet. Here's a pic of what I mean about the look of Zune.

 

[Brian Thomsen]

Simple, go to Amazon... Find album, determine if physical cd (with auto rip) or mp3 is cheaper... Buy... Rip to sd card... Play locally. Avoid data usage. Own music for life. I find I buy less than 10 album's a year at $8 a pop... Which is cheaper than a music subscription.

 

[sporosarcina]

As much as people say Groove is dead, as an app it has been and remains the poster child for integrating Fluent Design. I wonder if they like to use it as a test bed. I still use Groove for my 6000+ mp3 collection in OneDrive, add songs as I like them from Amazon usually (best prices), and flip between the free tier of Pandora and my Prime membership at Amazon for streaming and discovery.

 

[mrpuny]

The strangest thing about losing the Groove music pass (and to a lesser extent purchases) is that I've been reevaluating my approach to acquiring music, and I've actually moved away from paid subscriptions, and even buying music to a degree. I have a moderate library of ripped and purchased music that's been growing since early iTunes days. Also used mainly iTunes and then Amazon for purchasing music over the years, and certainly those are still options. And with Groove and OneDrive (with my Office 365 subscription), I've got plenty of space to store and access this music.

As for streaming, with Xbox Music/Groove Music, I had bought several discounted codes years ago when Microsoft offered them, so I never really paid full price while using the service. What I realized trying other services now, is that faced with full price, I really don't use the streaming access as much as I thought. Meanwhile, I've also got Prime Music available as part of my Amazon Prime subscription, so that's "free" in the sense of I'm already paying for it. I also enjoy listening to "radio", either via Pandora or Spotify-free type services, or a few favorite broadcast radio stations via Tune-In.

Lastly I've come to really appreciate another "free" service - again free in the sense that I'm already paying for it via taxes. My local public library offers Freegal - a service that offers both music downloads (free to keep with no DRM) and streaming. I think the exact terms vary depending on what a particular library subscribes to, but with mine, I can download 3 tracks per week, and also stream for 3 hours per day. Their catalog isn't the greatest, of course, but they have a mix of new and old tracks, and I've always been able to find music to download (to my Onedrive music library) and stream. (They also have android and iOS apps as well as a web interface. All pretty bare bones UI, but hey, "free".)

 

[MBytes]

Don't waste your time. There is no Spotify SDK for UWP.

Huh? Spotify SDK are pretty much JSON or XML, with links to images and music. Why do you think you have several third party Spotify apps on Android? There are no limitations to frameworks or programming languages. If someone is dedicated enough they can make an alternate player. Microsoft has a music player and the entire infrastructure, now dead, for Groove, they just need to link to Spotify (which I am not saying is a 2min thing either), and all the hard work done isn't gone, and have a compelling reason for people to continue to use Groove app. As a user, instead of logging to your Microsoft account, you'll login to your Spotify account, and you are set.

 

[DJCBS]

I buy it the same way I've always done. I get the physical CD.
Then I rip it on a computer and put the music in my NAS. Then if I know I'll listen to that music often, I also place it on the microSD card of my dedicated music player. Otherwise I'll stream it from the NAS.

 

[anon(10417682)]

Up here in Canada, we don't have Amazon's music download service, just Prime Music which is a subscription service like Spotify. I also enjoy listening to music from smaller Asian countries like Taiwan. I've always found both Groove Music and Spotify as being limited in terms of selection, that's why I've always bought AAC (.m4a) from iTunes.

My public library also offers Freegal Music where I can get 5 free songs per week in mp3 format, paid for by my public library subscription.

 

[Triakel]

Groove was the only streaming service that still worked reliably on my family's Windows phones. When Microsoft discontinued the streaming service, I found the application much less useful and in turn I found our Windows phones to be much less useful. I'd intended to stay with Windows phone until our phones failed, but not having streaming music available approved a bigger deal than I anticipated. It was the catalyst for me to finally switch to Android.

I was already a Spotify subscriber (mainly for the higher-quality files and the ability to use Spotify connect with my stereo) and I continue to use it.

I also picked up a subscription to YouTube Red. I think it's a good deal considering one gets commercial-free YouTube and access to Google Play Music streaming.

I fill in any blanks with Bandcamp. The Android app works well and it allows me to both stream and purchase files. My main reason for using it is to financially support independent artists. A single album purchase on Bandcamp can pay an artist hundreds of times what they'd receive from my Spotify listening.

I thought I'd continue to use Groove daily for listening to my music files as well as tracks I uploaded to my OneDrive. In practice, I listen to streaming services almost exclusively. The exception is when I want to listen to high quality FLACs on my headphones. But instead of firing up Groove I tend to use foobar2000 or stream them directly to my stereo receiver from my home network.

 

[Pug2erto]

I just buy CDs now

 

[Captain_Eric]

First, I know Groove streaming is gone, but Groove as a player certainly is not "dead and buried," that's just bad reporting.

And I miss Groove.

But we march forward, so

1) Deezer: Presently, out of the blue, I use Deezer most of the time, just to stream. It's premium service is free from my mobile provider, meaning it doesn't not consume data nor have a monthly fee, very nice. Their Flow feature "learns" me, by my thumbs up and downs. Its really good. Can't beat free either.
2) Groove: like other people here, I still stream my huge personal collection via Groove from OneDrive. Wonderful.
3) Spotify: in the past, before Groove took off, I loved Spotify. Now, I don't. Most likely, I'll drop it. Better options elsewhere.
4) Amazon Music: It's in trial for me. So far, it's so-so. I have Amazon Prime, so I get the (limited) free streaming. And I'm toying with an Amazon Echo, which for $4 bucks a month I get the Full Amazon catalog. It does not have radios that learn me like Deezer Flow. Only play lists that are so-so. So, I'm on the fence.
5) buying: I rarely bought in the past, and only for tracks I could not stream or buy via Groove, which was rare. And when I did, I bought from Amazon, MP3, and put it in OneDrive and streamed it from Groove. In theory that will continue.

One other thought, I really miss having everything in one app like Groove. So I contemplate, and might test, moving my personal collection from OneDrive to Amazon so I can stream their music and mine from one app. I faintly recall that Amazon music storage might be limited or expensive, so it will take some study, including if the can play the Microsoft WMA format (or whatever it was called). Spotify won't.

Thoughts on that last point anyone?

 

[Bobvfr]

Another one who has gone back to CD's, MS closed the "Pass" part of Groove because they weren't making money, as far as I am aware Spotify have never made a profit, what's to stop them going under or taking services away.

So from now on I will find my CD's, rip them to .flac and store locally.

I would use Groove on my Surface Pro 4 and my 950XL, BUT I can't on my Xbox One X as:

1 Groove doesn't support .flac from OneDrive

2 Groove doesn't support local music on the Xbox

So I am using VLC so I get consistent interface across devices, I would prefer to use Groove, but until MS correct those two omissions I am not using it.

I wonder how much income MS have lost, we had three Groove passes, my wife ditched her Skype number (She didn't really use it), I have ditched my Skype subscription and between us we haven't bought any movies from them, we were happy to spend the odd bit of money with MS, but the ditching of the Groove pass has made us re-think our spending policy towards MS.

 

[RTGent]

The main consequence for me has been greater fragmentation, particularly on how I play my music. I never stopped buying CDs, though I haven't bought more than 10-15 a year this century, including for gifts, since the age of services and streaming. I've thought of just sticking with my own 5-6000K track collection, but I did move to Spotify with the trial and subscribed for the .99 per 3-month trial instead of the one-month transition offer we got. And I've gotten used to Spotify, even if it doesn't compare to my Microsoft services. Then again, Groove service didn't compare to my Zune service, especially with my original 10-tracks-included deal!!! THAT was my best-there-ever-was-and-ever-will-be deal, bar NONE.

I appreciate that Spotify has an app for my W10M Lumia 950, Win 7 NUC, Win 10 Surface Pro, and android Sony XZ1 Compact. Spotify works seamlessly across all platforms and devices, BUT the software is not as good as Groove or Zune, AND it does NOT integrate my personal and pass music the way Microsoft software did. I use Amazon's Prime music some, and could definitely compete with its Ultimate, but can't without an app for the 950. So, as long I keep relying on this as my main phone, I'll probably stick with Spotify, although another big limitation is that it doesn't offer a discounted annual rate -not a deal-breaker for me, but a big competitive disadvantage if Amazon Ultimate became an option. One big risk, is that I'd SURELY be buying much more music from Amazon :excited:.

I still use Groove on my 950, and also use VLC on my Sony phone because it plays my WMA lossless, without ads.

As for Spotify's prospects: who knows. But, they are the biggest by far, their 320 kbps streaming is excellent (I've just this month stopped ripping at FLAC and WMA lossless), they now have video offerings, and I've read of rumors that Apple may be considering dropping its download sales -given the first big drops in downloaded music sales since they started, no doubt because of streaming options, and that would probably help Spotify and other streaming services. And here's the latest on part of its financial strategy: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/media/spotify-ipo.html
In any event, I sleep well knowing that Amazon is a good backup and option. Enjoy the music.