Groove Music – Amnesia in Action

Microsoft has released a new version of its Groove Music app (version 3.6.1210.0) for Windows 10. They’ve also introduced yet another bug into it, a showstopper, as far as I’m concerned.

Groove keeps losing my entire album collection, and trying to rebuild it in a never-ending cycle.

I have 1,000+ albums stored on a Windows Home Server 2011 system, and connected to it are four Windows PCs (desktop, laptop, a Windows Tablet and a Surface 3), all running Groove and Windows 10. On each of the connected devices, the root music folder on the WHS2011 system is defined as a music library (and hence defined as a watched folder – in my case, \\DEGAS\Music – within Groove on each system).

Now that all the instances of Groove have been updated to version 3.6.12.10.0, what will happen is that when I’m viewing my Albums, the albums will suddenly disappear, Groove will say there are zero albums available offline, and display the “Get some music” message.

After some time (30 minutes?), or a restart of the app, Groove will start re-indexing the music folders and albums will start appearing.

This goes on (slowly!) until all the albums have been scanned from the WHS2011 folders, at which point they will all suddenly disappear again and the process starts over.

This is happening on ~~three~~ all four of the PCs. Interestingly, the Surface 3 is not losing the albums. However, it’s also not displaying the correct number of albums held in my music library. I have 1,103 albums in my collection; according to Groove on the Surface 3, I only have 1,084. I suspect that this instance of Groove isn’t actually watching my watched folders… Addendum: I forced the Groove on the Surface 3 to rebuild its index, and now the same thing is happening on the Surface 3 as on the other PCs.

The 3.6.12.10.0 version of Groove is also not always displaying the “Adding music” notification when music is being added.

I feel that Microsoft is not testing this app sufficiently well; I wonder whether anyone on the testing team bothers to test it with a library held on a Windows Home Server 2011 system.

I don’t mind being a beta tester when software is in beta; but Windows 10 and the Microsoft apps are now released. Groove is still not fit for purpose.

I have also sent this information in as feedback to Microsoft via the Windows 10 Feedback app. Whether this will result in a fix remains to be seen.

Apparently, Microsoft has stated that for Windows 10 Home users, all operating system and app updates will be automatically installed, and this cannot be overridden by the user. That’s a bit worrying, since a bug in a new component can cause immediate damage. We don’t get the option to delay updates and check whether it’s safe to let installations proceed.

Addendum 18 August 2015: Groove is now up to version 3.6.1239.0, but the issue is still present…

Other people are also reporting this issue occurring for music collections held on both WHS 2011 and Windows Server 2012 systems, so I’m not the only one for whom this is a showstopper.

Addendum 19 August 2015: This latest version of Groove running on my Surface 3 refuses to find any local files (including the collection on WHS 2011) at all. And it’s a hit and miss affair on my other systems as well. Groove on my desktop claims my collection has 1,109 albums available offline; on my Yoga 3 Pro, Groove says I have 1,112 albums, and on my ThinkPad 10, Groove says I have just 644 albums.

Addendum 20 August 2015: after 36 hours(!) of adding files, Groove on my ThinkPad 10 now says I have 1,108 albums available offline. So what’s it to be? 1,109, 1,112, or 1,108? All instances of Groove are looking at exactly the same collection; one might think that they could agree on the correct total of albums. Oh, wait a minute, Groove on the Desktop PC has just lost the index again, and has restarted to index the collection, While Groove on the Surface 3 still resolutely refuses to see any albums at all…

I’m sorry, but this software is absymal.

August 7, 2015

Categories:

Computers and Internet, Music, Windows Home Server

Windows 10

9 responses to “Groove Music – Amnesia in Action”

Rob

August 7, 2015

If Microsoft replies, I predict they will say WHS2011 has been unsupported since 8 January 2013, so tough.

Reply
1. Geoff Coupe
  
  August 7, 2015
  
  Funny if they do say that, since their product support lifecycle information states that Mainstream Support will end in April 2016 for WHS 2011…
  
  Reply
sesenter

August 14, 2015

I came across this post when searching for information of how to force Groove to add music from watched folders. I’m using Windows 10 with a separate internal hard drive that I use for media, so my watched folder is primarily “m:\media” although windows media player is still ripping CDs to C:\users\steve\music but every time I try and change the rip folder to M:\media it locks up and is back to C:\users\steve\music when I start media player again. My experience so far with the apps in Windows 10 is that they aren’t at all intuitive, and that Microsoft has a ways to go if they don’t want Windows 10 to join some of the other legendary Microsoft Flops. As a support tech, I can emphatically say that the majority of end users just want things to make sense and work like they’re supposed to.

Anyway, I’m ripping CDs into the c:\users\steve\music folder and it is being watched by Groove, but when Groove decides to add the new music is anyone’s guess. I can’t find a way to force it to add anything, either. Not to mention it’s a bit off putting using another program altogether to rip CDS.

Reply
Mark

August 16, 2015

I will never understand why Microsoft chooses to make things so difficult. Although not groove-related I spent quite a bit of time trying to get OneDrive for Business to sync our file server drive to the cloud..only to find out Microsoft specifically put in code to prevent server folders from being synced.

It is very possible/probable that Microsoft chooses to ignore WHS2011 in groove as a way to force you to start subscribing to their paid service.

Reply
1. Geoff Coupe
  
  August 16, 2015
  
  “It is very possible/probable that Microsoft chooses to ignore WHS2011 in groove as a way to force you to start subscribing to their paid service.”
  
  Oh gawd, I hope not, but the fact that it is entirely conceivable speaks volumes for the current perception of Microsoft in customers’ eyes.
  
  Reply
Breno Assis

August 19, 2015

I also have the very same issue here. Upgraded yesterday and the installed version of Groove (Music) did index my whole libray, today (Aug 19th) the app was updated to 3.6.1239.0 and the issue began… Got here trying to find a solution… If anyone manages to find one.

Reply
Media in the Home – The Journey Continues, and Roon is Discovered | Geoff Coupe's Blog

February 11, 2016

[…] out; the Windows 10 music player Groove continues to be without a “Play to” function and is practically useless in other ways. In addition, with every release of Windows 10 Microsoft seems content to give us a […]

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jarrodfactor

February 17, 2016

Hi Geoff. Frequent reader of your blog, which I first came across when searching for some troubleshooting with the Cast To feature.

I too have a Denon amp, and it actually works pretty well with Cast To, apart from Windows incorrectly limiting (and transcoding down) the resolution of audio sent to it. Hi-res Flacs are converted down to 44.1khz, even though the amp can natively play back 96/24 flac files.

Do you know of a way of editing the Windows driver for the Denon amp to add more audio formats?
In the Device Details there is a property called DLNA UPnP sink protocol info which has the value:

http-get:*:audio/L16;rate=44100;channels=1:DLNA.ORG_PN=LPCM,http-get:*:audio/L16;rate=44100;channels=2:DLNA.ORG_PN=LPCM,http-get:*:audio/L16;rate=48000;channels=1:DLNA.ORG_PN=LPCM,http-get:*:audio/L16;rate=48000;channels=2:DLNA.ORG_PN=LPCM,http-get:*:audio/mpeg:DLNA.ORG_PN=MP3,http-get:*:audio/x-ms-wma:DLNA.ORG_PN=WMABASE,http-get:*:audio/x-ms-wma:DLNA.ORG_PN=WMAFULL,http-get:*:audio/mp4:DLNA.ORG_PN=AAC_ISO,http-get:*:audio/3gpp:DLNA.ORG_PN=AAC_ISO,http-wavetunes:*:audio/x-ms-wma:*,http-get:*:audio/wav:*,http-get:*:audio/x-wav:*,http-get:*:audio/flac:*,http-get:*:audio/x-flac:*,http-get:*:image/jpeg:*

… so it seems obvious what needs to be added here. But I can’t for the life of me work out how to make the additions.

I agree it’s a shame the way Microsoft has treated it’s Play To / Cast To feature. I just discovered that it also works with my WDTV – and quite successfully too, streaming full 1080p MKV files with little issues.

Reply
1. Geoff Coupe
  
  February 17, 2016
  
  Hi jarrodfactor, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to edit the Windows driver to do this. It sounds as though you would need to be able to get the source for the driver, and I don’t know how you would do that.
  
  Reply