Windows 10 Tip: Pin Your Favorite Music to Start

With Windows 10, a new generation of users will be introduced to Microsoft’s excellent digital music solution, which has been renamed to Groove Music in this release. As you might expect of a modern universal app, Groove Music integrates with Windows 10 in ways that are not possible with traditional desktop applications. And among the improvements is the ability to pin the music that you wish to access frequently to the Start menu.

This is, perhaps, a bit more powerful than you may realize, especially if you’ve been stuck using traditional music apps like iTunes or Zune with Windows 7. The reason is that Windows 10’s universal apps support a technology called deep linking that lets the developer provide multiple entry points into the app. That is, instead of just launching the app and finding the content you want, you can link to the content you want directly from the Start menu.

Many universal apps provide this functionality. The Weather app, for example, lets you pin any location as a tile on the Start menu, so you can keep track of the forecast in multiple places at the same time. Groove Music, of course, lets you pin music.

And by this I mean, any music. You can pin any album, artist, song, radio station, or playlist to the Start menu. That includes content that is on your PC, in your cloud collection—e.g. available in OneDrive or through a Groove Music Pass if you have on—or even in the store. If it’s available in Groove Music, you can pin it to the Start menu.

The act of pinning music works exactly as you’d expect. With most types of music—an album, artist, song, or radio station—you can simply right-click (or tap and hold on) it and choose “Pin to Start” from the pop-up menu that appears.

With playlists, you have to first display the playlist and then choose More and then “Pin to Start” to do so. (You can also use this second method with an album, and the artist view provides a direct Pin to Start link.)

Like any pinned tiles in Start, these music tiles can be arranged and grouped as needed, and you can of course name any groups as you would normally.

And the point here is that you can now more quickly and easily access the music you wish to listen to most frequently. Just click the tile you want and Groove Music will load that selection and begin playing it.