Groove is the name of default music player in Windows 10. It replaces Xbox music app included in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, Microsoft had undoubtedly made some improvements on the original Music app from Windows 8 but still it is just not worth using for power users. The reason? It is half baked, lacks many features and at last it is not customizable even a little bit. Lets look at some of the problems in the Groove Music and what other music players can you use to replace it.
Groove Music Player in Windows 10
The Groove App is not such of a groover
The app starts fine, looks a bit minimalistic and even has a not bad library management. It starts to look weak if a power user starts using it. Boot it up, add some songs and after you think you need to tweak the sound output a little bit and you find that there is nothing you can do about it. The Groove Music Player does not have any Equalizer or even a dialog box to change sound output settings. You don’t have the ability to use auto playlists on the player. Meaning you can’t have an automated list of all song rated more than 4 stars. The included playlist option does not let you export music playlist.
Alternatives To Groove Music
There were always some good music playing apps out here for Windows, most are freeware and some are worth paying for. Getting a bit deeper on Groove app we find that it is doing two things as an app. The first one is playing locally installed music and the second one is offering music streaming from Microsoft Groove Music Service. Well there are alternatives available for both the tasks. Groove Music Streaming Costs around $9 per month or $100 Per year.
Groove Music is charged comparatively similar to other services such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Music Streaming service.
Streaming Alternatives to Groove Music Service
Music Streaming market is big, and it is just getting bigger day by day, Apart from Groove we have Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Music and more alternatives.
Spotify
Costing almost same as Groove Music for Premium subscription, Spotify is the only streaming service that offers free tire. Spotify app is available for nearly all major platforms. It is perhaps the best streaming out there. Spotify is an excellent alternative for power users because it supports Add-Ons such as equalizers. Same as Groove, Spotify also offers a web player.
Apple Music
Apple’s answer to Spotify, Apple Music is available for iOS, Windows ( using iTunes), OS X. Apple will also make the app for Android, it Costs almost same. Apple offers three-month free trial before buying the subscription.
Google Play Music
Google Play Music is not available as an app for Windows or OS X, on a PC you will need to use the website to stream music. App available for Android is good enough for daily use.
Music Player alternatives to Groove Music App
If you are not the streaming person and instead you believe in storing and playing music locally, you can switch to any music players just by a couple of clicks. Below here I have listed some of the Best Music Players and Management Software out here.
Windows Media Player
Good Old Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is still included in Windows 10; sadly there are no improvements, and it looks same as Media Player from Windows 7. WMP supports music streaming over the network, and it also has almost perfect library management system. It supports nearly all things that Groove does plus auto playlist and Video Playback. It may be your best pick it you are not interested in downloading any other software.
Mediamonkey
MediaMonkey – Non Skinned
Take all the features for WMP and add superb skinning system, auto media organisation and a better ripping support and the result is Mediamonkey. Free version of Mediamonkey is enough to satisfy a majority of Geeks. For more there is a paid MediaMonkey Gold version too that costs approx Rs 3.5K. Media Monkey makes an excellent alternative to Groove Music if you have a huge music library and you want it to be organised.
MusicBee
MusicBee in Xbox Theater Mode
MusicBee is also an excellent media playing and management software it has a feature set somewhat similar to MediaMonkey. MusicBee comes with more preinstalled skins than MediaMonkey. It has a great theater mode that will work mostly as a now playing screen from WIndows Media Player. MusicBee is a complete freeware and does not have any paid variant at the time of Writing. It is good at tagging and managing media, tweaking sound output and retrieving metadata from internet for local files.
AIMP
AIMP with Default Skin
AIMP is available for Windows and Android; it is a perfect simple no-nonsense music player for the platforms. The latest version is 3.6 for Windows. AIMP beats Groove Music in terms of functionality and customizability. It has great custom Skins and addons plus it is not a resource hog. The UI is a bit messy to look at first but as soon as you start using it you will find it comfortable enough for music Playing.
Foobar2000
Foobar2000 is an almost DIY music player. The Default theme looks pretty old, however tons of themes are available for free to use. Also nearly every feature is extendable thanks to great Components (Read:add on) support. It is the only open source app in our list but it stands out in terms of flexibility. It is a bit confusing to use so it may take some time in getting used to it.
Apart from these apps Internet has tons of other Music Players, for more be sure to check out Best Free Software List.
Informative list. I’ll have to check some of these out, thanks for sharing it!
I absolutely love Spotify!
Which one can set bookmarks please?
Can anyone recommend me a less resource hungry application for listening to music?
You forgot winamp, and I won’t be letting go of that anytime soon
WinAmp is great, too bad the development has stopped.
WinAmp was my favorite music player in the late 90s…
I’ll check this out….except Windows Media Player–it’s the one I want to replace. When I unplugged my external drive with my music on it and then reinserted the USB connection, Windows Media Player “updated” all the information and overwrote every single thing, Artists, Genre, Album, that I had typed in myself. For older classical records that means I have countless “unknowns” now. And all the album titles that I input with the composer have reverted to titles like “Romantic String Trios” and so on. Artists where I switch their first name to follow their last name have now reverted to their first name.