Groove Music lets you refine playlist curation

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Microsoft is playing an ambitious but cautious game with Groove Music under Windows 10 Mobile, with a long 'beta' programme using the Windows Insiders on the Fast ring as testers. Today brings v3.6.2397.0, with changelog below. Top of the improvements list is probably the ability to refine Your Groove playlists, plus being able to correct album meta data on the fly.

Here's the rough changelog for Groove Music v3.6.2397.0 since we last featured it here a month ago:

  • Try out Explore - with a Music Pass, you can discover new music, get featured playlists, and create genre-based radio stations
  • In Your Groove, now you can tell us what you think of every playlist - or mute songs in a playlist - and we'll improve them over time
  • Update album info, artist name and other metadata right in the app
  • We added a bit more telemetry to the Cortana integration with Groove Music so that we can even better understand when she doesn't deliver on your requests related to music.
  • We updated the Feedback Hub app so that it collects even better information about your collection when you submit feedback about the app.
  • We updated the way the app looks for music on SD cards so that discovery is more reliable
  • Bug fixes

Now that the masses are on the Anniversary Update though, wouldn't it be a good idea to release all this sometime soon as an update to the production version of Groove Music? My Lumia 1520 is on the production version of Windows 10 Mobile and its Groove Music application is relatively ancient.

Some screens of the new Groove in action:

Screenshot, Groove MusicScreenshot, Groove Music

Rather than jumping straight into a playlist, if you tap on its title you now get a summary, including the ability to 'like this playlist'. Or 'dislike' it, of course, use the thumbs up and down icons. The idea is that the AI behind the playlist generation picks up cues and refines what you like and dislike, presumably in terms of artist, duration, genre and variety.

Screenshot, Groove MusicScreenshot, Groove Music

You can also long press tracks and even albums, choosing 'Edit info' to edit the meta data directly, as shown. Hard work perhaps, but if the music on this phone will be your 'master' then why not?

Update it in the Store in the usual way, if you're on the Insiders 'Fast' ring.