While its streaming music service was killed off, Microsoft continues to support and add new features to its Groove Music app.
While Microsoft has killed Groove Music Pass, the company’s streaming music service, its native Groove Music app continues. It is a native UWP app and can be used to play your local music as well as music you’ve uploaded to OneDrive. While continuing to support its development, Groove Music has received some cool new features like an EQ and visualization experience and improved playlist abilities. Another cool feature we’ll look at here is the ability to set artist art from Groove as the desktop and/or lock screen background.
The artist art from Groove Music isn’t the same as album art, but a series of images from the musicians. You can view the now playing artist art by clicking the album thumbnail in the lower-left corner when a song is playing.
To find the artist art, click the album art thumbnail of the currently playing music.
Then you’ll see other band and artist images rotate as the music is playing.
Artist art will rotate in the Groove Music app as the album is playing.
Make Music Artist Art Desktop or Lock Screen Wallpaper
To set the artist art as the desktop or lock screen background, open Groove Music app and click on Settings (gear icon) in the lower left panel. Then scroll down and flip on either or both switches to turn on artist album art on the desktop or lock screen.
A couple things to note here. In my testing, the art that displays will vary depending on what’s in the source music folder. Also, if there is no art in the music folder, nothing will show on the desktop.
Here is an example of the Neil Young artist art set as the desktop background on Windows 10.
One thing to keep in mind is that the background image you had originally set as your wallpaper won’t return after closing out of Groove Music. You need to change it back manually by heading to Settings > Personalization > Background. An easy way to get there is to right-click on the desktop and select Personalization.
Then from here, you can select the background you want to use instead. Note that you will see many of the other artist art options from previous music you played from Groove Music.
Do you use Groove Music on your Windows 10 system to play local files or do you use something else? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.