How to transfer your Groove Music playlists to other streaming platforms

By Richard Devine
published

The Groove Music shutdown is almost here. Here's one way to move your playlists to just about any other music service.

Groove Music and Spotify
Groove Music and Spotify (Image credit: Windows Central)

As of December 31, 2017, Microsoft's Groove Music Pass will no longer be active. This means all the music you had in it will be gone for good, that is, unless you transfer your playlists out to another service.

Microsoft and Spotify (opens in new tab) have partnered up to make it easy to move over your playlists, but while it's probably the biggest alternative platform, it's not necessarily the best for everyone. There are other services out there that you might prefer to use, like Amazon, Google Play Music, Deezer, even Apple Music.

We've been hunting for one easy way to get music out of Groove and into any other service, and we've found Stamp. A single Windows application that will take care of it for you.

Download Stamp for Windows

What does Stamp do?

Stamp

Simply put, Stamp will hook into a number of music services and allow you to move your playlists between them. In this case, since Groove Music is supported, we're using it to transfer playlists from there to other services.

It isn't free, though. You'll have to spend around $10 to get the desktop package (though it's free to try), or spend a little more and get a bundle that includes the ability to use an Android or iOS device to do this.

That might be off-putting to some, but if you have a lot of music in your Groove library it's worth it to save on man hours alone. Because Stamp works quickly.

Which services does Stamp support?

Stamp

All the big names are here, thankfully. Here's a quick list:

  • Groove Music.
  • Spotify.
  • Amazon Music.
  • Pandora.
  • Deezer.
  • Tidal.
  • Google Play Music.
  • YouTube.
  • Apple Music.

Stamp also allows you to export your playlists as a CSV file if you wish.

How to move your Groove playlists

Stamp

Specifically we're focusing here on moving from Groove Music for obvious reasons, but the same basic steps apply to any service that Stamp supports.

  1. Select your current service.
  2. Enter your username and password to log in.
  3. Select your destination service.
  4. Enter your username and password to log in.

Stamp will now begin moving your playlists across services and it'll tell you at every step how long is remaining. Unless you have a massive library, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Any songs it can't export, for example, because they're not in the library on your new service, Stamp will tell you and allow you to export a list so you know what will be missing.

That's all there is to it. Microsoft makes it easy to move to Spotify, but for a small outlay Stamp can easily move you to any of the other leading music streaming services. You'll still have to act quickly, of course, because once Groove is gone, it's gone.

If you have any other tips for moving between music services be sure to drop them into the comments.

Download Stamp for Windows

Richard Devine
Richard Devine
Managing Editor - Tech, Reviews

Richard Devine is a Managing Editor at Windows Central with over a decade of experience. A former Project Manager and long-term tech addict, he joined Mobile Nations in 2011 and has been found on Android Central and iMore as well as Windows Central. Currently, you'll find him steering the site's coverage of all manner of PC hardware and reviews. Find him on Mastodon at mstdn.social/@richdevine

22 Comments
  • This is the problem I have with "renting" music from streaming services, nothing is owned and these work arounds need to be used if the service one day stops. I'll be sticking with Groove and using it to play my own MP3 files from OneDrive.
  • Same here. From OneDrive to all devices.
  • Exactly.  We only purchase music.  We don't "rent" it.  And there isn't a single streaming service that I've found acceptable.  We keep our entire music library on OneDrive (well, on our home server, which is then sync'd to OneDrive) so we can access it anywhere.  
  • Providing you have space on OneDrive to store it all. Although with an Office 365 + 1 TB drive space, this is definitely NOT an issue!  
  • @KingyOwl and @MPetrozio, I'm with you guys. Groove remains a great service for its integration with Windows and OneDrive (and my Windows 10 phone for playlist syncing). It's a little more while buying music, but because I mostly listen classic rock, well, there's not a lot more of that coming into existence. So I think it actually saves money in the long run. I doubt I spend $10 average per month on music at this point, and when I did, it was back when music came on CDs and no streaming option anyway.
  • This is the way to go. MP3 for life!
  • Add me to that list as well. If I really like an artist, I'll go buy the album from Amazon. If I only like a certain track, same thing applies.Heck, I've even got off line play lists on the Groove app on my Kindle Fire.......
  • I use it my Amazon tablet too, but it doesn't seem I can get it to change to landscape mode.. do you have that problem too?
  • The problem is I don't want to buy music from Amazon.  Or iTunes or Google.  We loved being able to have a single account to buy media, including music.  Now Microsoft has ditched that.  Now we're in a search for a company to buy our music from.
  • So why can't that company be Amazon? So what there's no Windows Mobile app. There's barely an app for anything on Windows Mobile anymore (cold hard facts, I don't like it but it's the truth). At least with Amazon you buy the music and download the files to keep. You're not obliged to sign up to a streaming service.
  • Quite a few of these "services" are becoming more and more "competitive"! I have pretty much decided on Spotify for streaming because they are not tied to any OS! When I do buy it will be amazon, then I move it to onedrive and stream it using GROOVE! F all these greedy mfers!
  • I'm a fairly big fan of music. I was crushed by the departure of Groove. I have a pretty nice collection of: Vnyl, CD, and Digital. Being on Windows Phone I was using Groove...I got to really like it. Then the phones died and I switched to Android...I kept using Groove. Then the news...I switched to Spotify. I enjoy it. It has a GREAT music selection. It works seemlessly with Android Auto...I am a fan. Spotify isn't going anywhere. So the $9.99 a month(less than the cost of a CD) I spend to listen to anything I could possibly want...is easy money spent.
  • Just downloaded it to try and it looks like it only does playlists, not the entire library.  Is that correct?  While helpful, most of my Groove music isn't part of a playlist.
  • It's just for playlists. Finding a solution to movie your entire library has proven to be pretty difficult.
  • I'm not sure there's any way to transfer albums tbh besides Microsoft's tool to move to Spotify. I don't know why but this is the best app I found (and I looked long and hard.) Could you not perhaps add all your music to one playlist and move that? I don't know if it'll then sort into albums on the new service, but it might be worth a shot? Even if you end up with just one Groove playlist in a new service it might be better than losing it all and starting again?
  • We just need the option to transfer from Groove to Spotify more than once.. I did it a month ago, but now I want to do it again.... Any suggestions?
  • Can't you still access it in settings?
  • Nope. It's a one time gig.
  • Try Playlist Converter. It is an UWP app. Worked reliably to move my Groove and some personal WMP playlists to Deezer. It supports many Streaming Services to move content between. First playlist is free and then you get 10 songs per Playlist or buy the app for $1.99 and you have unlimited potential ;). Simple and effective.
  • Wouldn't let me in without an active Groove pass so can't try it out sadly. Beauty of Stamp is that you can also use it on your phone. (In before Win Mo cries)
  • Thanks for pointing out the criteria for active Groove access. I couldn't have known. Definitely try before you buy ;).
  • I have downloaded the tool called musconv which worked fantastically It saved my time and I have easily moved my playlist