Groove Music update with numerous changes now available to everyone

Last week Microsoft released a significant update to the Groove Music app with a number of improvements, such as faster start up as it no longer insists on logging you in to Xbox Music.

Then the update was only available to Windows Insiders, but this is no longer the case, making the wide range if improvements available to everyone.

https://twitter.com/ellenment/status/722916272028057600

The update adds the new UI and UX features to the PC that were already present in Mobile like gapless playback, a new translucent UI and more.

For both classes of device, Microsoft has improved sign-in and dependencies on Xbox Live, so we should see less playback errors in future.

See the full changelog below:

• When unplayable tracks appear in Now Playing, we properly gray them out and jump over them without displaying an error
• We prevent you from playing unplayable content (for instance, if you are offline and try to play a streaming album we won’t try to play it, we’ll immediately tell you it can’t be played and why)
• We added extra telemetry to playback errors so that we can continue to improve the app
• We removed the app’s dependencies on Xbox Live which means you don’t need an Xbox Live account to use Groove (and sign-in is much faster and more reliable)!
• It’s easier to tell what’s happening when Groove is sync’ing your collection for the first time.
• You’ll see “Unknown Artists” less often in your collection because the app looks at both song artist and album artist metadata.
• The process we use to show additional metadata to what’s in your local files is 10x faster and gives better results!!The app defaults to Explore for search results if you have a Groove Music Pass and you have don’t have a limited data plan.
• When viewing artists, you can view their work by albums or songs. Try it by selecting “Songs view” when viewing an artist.
• Radio stations can be started from albums and songs – the app will start the radio based on the artist.
• The app now shows your collection size at the top of the collection views.
• On mobile, background art fills the screen so that it’s seen under the system icons at the top.
• You can use ‘Refine’ to filter your collection by source (OneDrive, Pass, Purchased, On this device only).
• If something gets really out of whack in your collection, you can now choose to ‘Reset’ your cloud collection.
• We added jumplist support for collection views organized by release year.
• The ‘hotlinks’ in Album reviews and Artist bios now work on mobile.
• We added a simple lockscreen setting for Continuum. We made lots of styling updates for Continuum too!

The update isn’t out yet, but you’ll be able to get it in a matter of hours from the Windows store.