Fix Unknown Artists / Albums in Groove

Groove Music (formerly known as Xbox Music and Zune Music) is a digital music streaming service brought to the world by Microsoft. It offers music streaming through subscription as well as online purchases facilitated through the Windows Store.

There is a Groove app available for both Windows 10 smartphone and PC. Sometimes, you will notice Unknown Artists and Unknown Albums in your library. The main reason for this is the missing meta information in the music file.

Let’s check an example.
When we see the properties of the corresponding music file, we notice that some information is missing.
I usually use Mp3Tag to edit the meta tags of my music files, which allows us to edit metadata of multiple files at once. When we open the highlighted file using Mp3tag, we’ll see that some tags are missing.
Let’s change it and see.

Now you’ll see the entry is being added to the Albums list.
Same goes for the Artists. Even though there is an Artist’s name shown in the entry, these tracks are categorized under Unknown Artist.
As for now, it’s clear that Groove uses the Artist Name from Album Artist field, but not Artist or Contributing Artists field.
However, Mp3Tag does not allow you to update some fields, such as Album Artist. The only way you can update them is by editing the music file properties.
When you save the info, you’ll see that the file simply disappears from the Unknown Artist list.
However, it is available on the Artists list. You may need to re-launch Groove to check the changes.
The same holds true for Microsoft Groove on Windows Phone. However, you may need to copy the files to a PC and only then, you can make these changes.
Solving this issue is as simple as this. Hope to catch you soon again with handy solutions to your most pressing Information Technology issues. Have a good day!