Cortana has lost the ability to recognize songs, Shazam-style, thanks to Microsoft’s axing of Groove Music – and to make matters worse, the digital assistant now spouts a seriously slapdash-looking error message when called upon to identify a track.
The Groove Music streaming service was killed off at the end of last year, and this was what powered Cortana’s recognition chops; so it’s not surprising that they don’t function any longer.
Jason Deakins, a software engineer who works on the Cortana team, confirmed this was the case in a tweet.
Hi @faltermayer, that is correct: due to the shutdown of the Groove music service, Cortana's music recognition functionality has been retired.January 3, 2018
So now, when you click Cortana’s music icon during the playback of a song, you get the following error message:
Remove it already
This ‘attack of the placeholders’ error looks highly unprofessional in our opinion, and perhaps the real mystery here is why Microsoft hasn’t simply removed the icon.
That way there would be no questions or confusion over exactly what’s going on with this functionality, and no ropey error message cluttering up users’ screens. Presumably the icon will be stripped out in the very near future.
Unfortunately, Windows 10 folks now have very limited options when it comes to song recognition, seeing as the Shazam app isn’t in the Microsoft Store either. As far as we’re aware, about the only route you can now take for music recognition on the store is the SoundHound app.
Via and Image Credit: MS Power User
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