The shutdown of Microsoft's Groove Music service has eliminated music recognition capabilities in the software giant's Cortana personal assistant, giving Apple's Siri -- and its tight integration with Shazam -- a leg up on the competition.
Cortana software engineer Jason Deakins confirmed on Twitter that music recognition capabilities have been "retired" with the closing of Groove Music. Groove closed on Dec. 31, and was replaced with Spotify.
With Microsoft's ouster from the smartphone operating system space, Cortana is primarily a desktop personal assistant now. And though Siri for Mac is not as fully featured as it is on iOS, lacking functions such as HomeKit controls, Siri in High Sierra can still identify songs when requested.
However, Cortana on both desktop Windows 10 as well as Windows Phone still features a music icon that users can tap to listen. As noted by Windows Central, the system responds with "I found the song: Song unrecognized, on this service is retired, by music continues."
Shazam itself was actually pulled from the Windows Store in March of 2017. Since then, the service was acquired by Apple in December to bolster not only its music recognition capabilities, but also to leverage augmented reality capabilities.
While Shazam has a standalone app, it has also been integrated directly into Apple's Siri for years. For example, users can ask "Hey Siri, name that tune," and the system will listen for and identify a song, on both iOS and Mac. Song identification capabilities are not available on Apple Watch, however.