How to rescue your music from Microsoft Groove

Let's have a moment of silence for Groove, the music service that Microsoft just announced will go silent at the end of 2017.

Now let's get practical. If you purchased any songs or albums from Groove, you'll want to download them before Microsoft pulls the plug. You've got plenty of time, obviously, but you might as well get the job done sooner than later.

Just to clarify, we're not talking about songs you've streamed from Groove's sizable library, but rather music you bought outright via the Windows Store. That's yours to keep, and it'll arrive on your PC in DRM-free MP3 format.

Speaking of your PC, that's where the process begins:

Step 1: Open the Groove app.

Step 2: Click My Music to access your personal library, then click Songs.

Step 3: Click Filter and choose Purchased.

Step 4: Mouse over any song in the list, then click the checkbox that appears alongside it.

Step 5: In the menu that appears at the bottom, click Select All, then click Download after it appears in that same menu.

Depending on how much music you have, this may take some time. By default, Windows will dump everything into the folder C:\Users\[yourusername]\Music\Purchases.

Once you've downloaded all your tunes, you can add them to your OneDrive account (assuming you have sufficient space available) and stream them from there. Okay, but what about adding your songs to Spotify, which is where Groove Music Pass subscribers will end up? That's do-able, but we'll cover that process in another post.

In the meantime, let us know if you run into any issues retrieving your purchases from Groove -- and where you think you'll hang your music hat now that the service is disappearing.