For the past few years, Microsoft has been one of the handful of companies battling it out for your streaming music business. Now it looks like Microsoft is finally ready to throw in the towel.
Microsoft has announced that it’s ending its Groove Music streaming service. After December 31, 2017, Groove Music will no longer let you stream, download, or purchase music. Any content that you’ve already purchased and downloaded or uploaded to OneDrive will still work in the Groove Music app.
As a result of this decision, Microsoft has decided to partner with Spotify. This week, Microsoft will update Groove Music to add the ability to transfer your music to Spotify, including your playlists and collections.
Existing Groove Music subscribers will continue to have access to the service through December 31, 2017. Microsoft will issue prorated refunds to customers with subscriptions that extend beyond that date.
Streaming music has grown quite a bit in recent years and gained more traction with consumers, but it’s still a tough battle for anyone not named Spotify or Apple. Rdio was a great service that shut down in 2015, it doesn’t seem that Tidal is doing amazingly well, and now Microsoft is killing off Groove. It’s a bummer for fans of Groove Music, but at least Microsoft and Spotify are making it easy for Groove customers to transfer their playlists.
Did you ever try Microsoft Groove?
