When Microsoft first pushed Windows Media Player to the side for the Groove Music app in Windows 10, I was annoyed. Mostly because Groove Music seemed designed to push Microsoft’s streaming service and was constantly bugging me to sign up for a subscription or attempting to sell a download. At the time, I said it was unnecessarily complicated. Well, Microsoft’s attempts to become a player in the streaming game crashed and burned and they introduced a simplified version of Groove, which I have to say does a pretty good job. Groove is the default audio player for Windows 10 unless you change that. When you go to play audio, that’s the program that will open.
Or you can type Groove Music into the search box and click on the result.
Open it up and you’ll find that that there’s a very simple interface.
Groove will automatically detect any music added to the Music folder on your computer. Between the above and below screenshots I added some music to my PC and it appeared immediately in the Groove app with no action on my part.
Let’s explore the controls on the left side. Click the three-line menu icon to see the menu with labels until you are familiar with what each icon represents.
Up first, is a search box to look for music by title and artist.
Choose My music to see your whole collection. Recent plays and Now playing display just what you’d expect. You’ll also be able to create Playlists.
At the bottom left, you’ll see options for your Settings and an ad suggesting you get the Spotify streaming service. Yeah, Microsoft has clearly given up on the idea of their own streaming service. If you click on the Spotify logo, you’ll be taken to the Windows Store to download the Spotify app.
Tomorrow, I’ll show you the Settings features for Groove.
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