There are so many music services on the internet that it’s hard to say which is better than the other but you can review one verses the other to weight the differences and the pros and cons. The last few weeks I decided to review the Microsoft Groove Music service.
Groove has been around since the Zune released and has been rebranded to Xbox Music then rebranded to Groove. In a world where the iPod and iTunes was dominating with buy a song for 99 cents, Microsoft Groove was first with the Zune to offer a subscription based service. Now subscription based music services are common place with Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and lots of others but sometimes being first does not make you the most popular.
Pros
With Microsoft Groove I enjoyed the ability to upload my personal music library to my OneDrive and listen threw the Groove App on Windows 10 or threw web browser on any computer I was using at the time. This is one place that Microsoft Groove and Google Play have the advantage over Spotify and Apple.
Yes, you can get your personal music to your device with Spotify or Apple but you can’t upload it to the cloud to listen whenever you want at any time. There are some music and artists that streaming services just don’t offer or can’t this is where uploading to the cloud makes the most sense.
The one thing about Microsoft Groove is if you don’t want to pay $9.99 a month for the service you can still play all your music on your OneDrive so it’s not like Microsoft is trapping your music in the case you don’t want to buy the Music Pass service.
The music offered by Microsoft Groove Music Pass for $9.99 seemed very full. I did not find any artists not on the service but you would have to check depending on your personal music preference. I think we all can safely say it’s on par with Spotify or Google Music.
The iPhone app and the Android app both allow you to offline music just like other music services and you can offline not only your music from OneDrive but also Music Pass music. The Windows 10 app for Microsoft Groove is amazing it rivals that of Spotify with its amount of features and usability.
Microsoft Groove music does have radio built in like other services and the radio is really good at picking the right songs just like Pandora. I personally think that Groove does a better job then Spotify of picking the right song.
Cons
My biggest cons for Microsoft Groove is its lack of third party support for devices. Groove is amazing on the Xbox, Windows 10 and on Mobile Apps but outside of that realm there is no support for other products.
Spotify works on almost every device I have in my home, Roku, Chromecast and Echo. Microsoft Groove has Sonos support but that’s not a device I have in my home and that’s the only device where the app is native.
Overall I think Microsoft Groove is a great service that is on par with other major music services and in some ways is better. I think Microsoft’s Groove falls short on the support for third party devices. I think it’s a great service and at times is underestimated, under promoted and underutilized for its best features its integration with OneDrive and Xbox. The service was designed right and I think with a little more of a push by Microsoft could be a major player in the music market.