• Michael
• On April 29, 2016

Groove Music update available for Insiders on PC and Mobile

Windows Insiders who are on the Fast Ring can now update the Groove Music app for PC and Mobile to version 3.6.2078.0. With this update the Groove team allows Insiders to test new features and improvements before they reach the production devices.

The update includes:

• We can now cache your subscription state across app sessions so you’ll be able to sign into the app much more quickly when you launch it. We also improved the retry logic when connectivity is poor/erratic so that it’s restored more reliably.
• We’ve made improvements to background audio so that is more reliable and you see it appear to be loading or “buffering” less often.
• The process which matches your music to our catalog and allows us to populate artwork and missing metadata can now run in the background – so if you don’t leave the app in the foreground, you’ll still get all the great artwork and metadata.
• We are also using a new metadata service, which results in better matching (more artwork, metadata).
• With the latest OS builds, you can set theming for all your apps directly in OS Settings > Personalization > Colors. In our app, by default, we’ll use the OS settings. But you can also choose to set the theme independently if you want to.
• We made a fix so that page titles no longer animate “up” when entering a page. We heard feedback that the experience didn’t feel polished.
• We updated the diagnostics tied to Groove feedback submitted in the Feedback Hub so that it’s easier for use to diagnose issues. We also made another round of improvements to our playback telemetry to make it easier for us to investigate.
• We made loads of accessibility improvements related to high contrast mode, the narrator, and keyboard navigation. We also added a new keyboard shortcut for search – use Ctrl +Q to open the Search box from anywhere in the app.

There are also some known bugs found in this release. The most important one is probably:

• If you have previously played DRM-protected content from services like Groove Music, Movies & TV, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video or Hulu after updating to this build you might no longer be able to playback content from those services – will instead receive error