With Microsoft finally shuttering the Groove Music Pass, most Groove users will want to move on to a new service. Before you do so, however, you should download any purchases you made in Groove.

You can, of course, continue using the Groove app on Windows 10 and Xbox One. It will still be available, and will be updated, and provides access to your locally-stored and OneDrive-based music collection.

But here’s the thing: Even if you intend to keep using Groove, you must download your purchased music: This music will not be available to you to stream starting on January 1, 2018. You must download it first, and then manage it (read: back it up) from there on out.

To download your purchased music, open the Groove app in Windows 10 and navigate to My Music.

Then, select the entry next to Filter (“All” in my case) and select “Purchased” from the menu that appears. This changes the display so that only your purchased music is shown.

Now, select the music you wish to download: A selection checkbox appears as you mouse-over each item.

To select all music, select the first item, scroll to the bottom, hold down the SPACE key, and then select the final item.

Now, select Download from the toolbar at the bottom of the app window.

One final note: While Microsoft is promoting Spotify as an alternative to Groove Music Pass, this otherwise excellent service does have one major downside: It offers no (elegant) way of playing your own music. That is, you cannot use Spotify to play your OneDrive-based music, and if you download your Groove purchases to your PC, you can only play them from Spotify on that one PC. I’ll be looking at workarounds to this in the near future.

Tagged with Spotify