Microsoft’s new Media Player is making me miss Groove

Not really. Groove was terrible, and I’m sure the new Media Player almost has to be better by default. But when I go to my Music Library and sort by Artist, this is the image it presents for ABBA (ABBA is the first artist in the list):

Yes, it’s the Bee Gees’ late younger brother, ABBA Gibb.

Right next to that is a photograph of Alan Parsons, or possibly some stand-up comic who had a sitcom in the 90s called The British Pop:

“Yo, dig my project.”

I will say this: After sampling a few songs, they actually do sound better than in the fossilized software known as iTunes. So there’s that. But I also checked The Magnetic Fields’ album 69 Love Songs and yes, it has all three virtual discs smooshed together like so:

1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3

Which I suppose is an interesting way to experience the album, a pseudo-shuffle play without actual shuffling required.

Unsurprisingly, our glorious future of streaming music means that even downloaded songs from Apple Music are nowhere to be found in Media Player, as Apple has them DRM’d and hidden away, playable only through iTunes or an app like Cider that uses Apple’s specific APIs (and then it streams the songs anyway, instead of playing the local version on the computer).

Maybe I should go full hipster and start buying vinyl again.

(lol no)

Leave a Comment