Microsoft have shared information on new updates coming to Groove Music, available to users in the Windows Insider Fast ring now.

Microsoft are quickly turning the rebranded Xbox Music, now Groove Music, into a formidable music streaming service that stands it’s ground next to major competitors like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal. They’ve just launched another update to certain users, coming to everyone soon, just 2 weeks after releasing their last batch of updates to the service.

The next in a series of recent updates has been launched early for Windows Insiders users on the fast ring and brings a bunch of great improvements.

Here’s the full list of new features and improvements:

  • Playlists from Your Groove and Explore now get tracked in the recent plays section
  • When adding duplicate tracks to a playlist you will now be notified
  • With a Groove Music Pass, Cortana will now play music by genre even if your collection doesn’t have any music in that genre
  • Cortana will now play music when you ask her, even if you don’t have any in your library (she will play from Top Music in that case)
  • They added more telemetry to Cortana’s integration with Groove Music so that they can better understand when she doesn’t deliver on your requests related to music
  • The app now automatically enters full screen mode on the console
  • The Feedback Hub app has been updated to collect even better information about your collection when you submit feedback about the app
  • The way the app looks for music on SD cards has been updated to make discovery more reliable
  • Changes to improve local playback

Windows Insider Microsoft update Groove music streaming service

After the update details were revealed by Microsoft’s Ellen Kilbourne she added that “we decided to press pause on this one briefly to allow us to flight one more update to the last major payload published.” We’re not sure if that means the update isn’t available for Windows Insider Fast ring members at the moment.