Today Microsoft released a new support article that is notifying customers that the Groove Music apps for Android and iOS will be retired and stop working on 01 December 2018.

This action happens about a year after the company shut down its Groove Music Pass subscription service and pointed users towards Spotify as a replacement on various platforms including Windows 10 and mobile devices.

Although Microsoft has embraced cross platform availability of their services, it is not a surprise to see these apps being deprecated and shut down. Reality is that Groove Music on Windows 10 itself is now a just an app to play your own collection of music files which are stored locally or on OneDrive. The apps on Android and iOS are fairly worthless without the defunct Groove Music Pass to stream music on your mobile device.

Despite shutting down these two apps, I have no reason to believe there are any plans to shut down the Groove Music app on Windows 10 anytime soon.

Microsoft’s recommendations for playing your own music files on Android and iOS after this date is to use the platforms native OneDrive app, Google Play Music, or iTunes Match.